


With Starlight in Their Wake

by Wintermoth



Series: Starlight [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-23
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2017-11-19 07:35:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 75
Words: 403,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/570789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wintermoth/pseuds/Wintermoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's said goodbye, she's shed her tears, now she's ready to keep going.<br/>He's given her the chance for a goodbye, he's held her while she cried, and now he's ready to keep moving.<br/>While in London for chips and a visit to Shareen, Rose and the Doctor check into Royal Hope to investigate plasma coils building up around the hospital and end up on the moon in the middle of a Judoon inquiry. -- AU season 3 rewrite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: What Means the Most

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, I swore to myself I wasn't going to do this. But, dammit, my muse had other ideas. So here I am, hoppin on the bandwagon. Season 3 rewrite with Rose. Yep. I know a lot of season 3 rewrites can be a bit iffy, but give this a try. If the response I've already gotten for this on Teaspoon is anything to go by, it's worth the time spent reading.
> 
> Title comes from a quote in Fires of Pompeii. The Priestess says "This one is different. He carries starlight in his wake." Quotes will be taken all throughout seasons 1-3 so anything you recognize from the show probably is. I don't own Doctor Who or the TARDIS. Trust me. If I owned the TARDIS, I would not be here.
> 
> Cover made by Kazz. :)
> 
>  

“Is he treatin’ you right, Rose?”

“Yeah, ‘course he is.”

Rose watched as her former best mate shot a look at the tall, skinny alien currently occupying the corner of her living room. He was leaning against the wall, seemingly engrossed in the newspaper he’d bought when Rose had said she needed to nip by Shareen’s, but she knew better. He was listening to every single word, ready to rescue Rose if her friend got too close to the wrong subjects.

“I still don’t like him,” she muttered, not knowing he could hear. “You disappeared, Rose. A whole year! Not a word to your mum, or to me! And it was ‘cos of him, that’s what your mum said! And now you’ve been gone again for near a year! I know you needed to get away because of your mum, but you didn’t even call, not even to let me know you were still alive yourself and not dead halfway up some bloody mountain! No emails, no texts, not even any photographs!”

There wouldn’t have been any photographs to show. What had been a year for Shareen Costello had only been about two weeks for Rose; two painful weeks of nothing but lying around, sleeping, crying, reading, eating, talking, tea, telly, and more sleeping. No grand adventures, no alien planets, just floating. 

For a moment, Rose’s throat constricted painfully and she knew the pain was showing on her face but she didn’t care.

She’d gotten to say goodbye to them. The Doctor had worked without sleeping for a week, scanning time and space for a remaining crack to get a message through or, better yet, a hole they could step through. They’d found a crack, just one crack, wide enough for a message but no more. He’d used his telepathic abilities to call to her mother and when he was certain the message had gotten through, he set them into orbit around a supernova for power, and she’d gotten to see them. Her mother, Mickey, and the parallel version of her father who could offer Jackie everything this universe couldn’t. Everything except her daughter. But, that universe was kind, it seemed, because by the time Jackie had gotten to the bay where the crack came through, she was two months pregnant. Another daughter? A son? Rose would never know. And it hurt, knowing her mum was going to bring a life into existence that Rose would never know anything about it. The three of them had made the Doctor swear to take care of her on the pain of a slap from Jackie, the likes of which she promised he’d be feeling well into his next body.

She hadn’t really had a chance to grieve, holding onto the hope in the days before the message that she could get all the way through the void, maybe find a permanent hole they could go through on a regular basis, as silly of a notion as it was. And then within minutes after losing connection, Donna had appeared and Rose had to dry her tears quickly as the ginger bride ranted and raged, wanting to know where the hell she was and how the hell she was there and what the hell had the Doctor done to poor Rose to make her cry like that? 

After Donna was gone and Rose had recovered from the strain on the Huon particles that lurked inside her (something she had yet to admit to the Doctor), they’d temporarily retreated into space, and for the first time, Rose truly felt like a vagrant. She had no mum waiting for her in that flat in the Powell Estate. Jackie’s words rang through her head. _“When I'm dead and buried, you won't have any reason to come back home. What happens then?”_

Rose had known when she came back that she would never see her mother again if she stayed with the Doctor, but it hadn’t really registered, not when faced with the possibility of living without the Doctor. But all of a sudden, it was there. She was never going to see her mum again.

She’d managed to hold onto her grief as she and the Doctor moved through the flat, sorting through everything, deciding what she would take onto the TARDIS with her, and what would stay behind to be dealt with by the authorities who would eventually come to call.

She held on while they added Jackie Tyler to the list of the dead. 

She held on while talking to Shareen, who had been watching the ever growing list of the dead and called her immediately upon seeing Jackie’s name. They hadn’t even left London yet, so she and the Doctor had swung by, the Doctor only coming because Shareen had a few words for him, making him swear up and down, just as Mickey and Jackie had before, that he wouldn’t leave Rose now that she was alone, telling Rose that if he ever did she was welcome to crash at her place until things got sorted.

They stopped to see Sarah Jane who was immensely relieved they were both alive, knowing all along they’d had some part in the swift defeat of the invaders, but not knowing if they’d survived. There was no mention of Jackie. Rose held on through it all. 

Only afterwards, when they went into the Time Vortex again, leaving 2007 London and the aftermath behind, did Rose allow the grief to show, and then there was no stopping it. No matter how you looked at it, Rose had lost her mother. She was as good as dead. Mickey was gone. Shareen and her other human friends, well, she’d really left them behind a long time ago. She was alone. Except for the Doctor. 

Two weeks floating, doing nothing. He’d practically gone mad with boredom, but he willingly endured the restlessness because Rose needed him. He stayed with her through it all doing anything and everything to help her, whether it was rubbing her back, stroking her hair, or staying as she slept; bringing her tea, singing to her softly, and just holding her. And when the storm of grief had passed, he’d helped her sort the stuff from her flat.

Feeling better after days of living under a dark cloud, Rose had craved something normal. Something reliable and familiar and had decided on chips. The Doctor happily agreed—this body loved chips as much as she did. They landed in 2008, far enough into the future that Canary Wharf wouldn’t be hanging over the city like a cloud, but close enough that Rose could swing by and see Shareen, who had phoned a few times to check on her, and now here they sat on the couch together in Shareen’s flat, just as they had done dozens of times.

To Rose, those days with Shareen felt like another lifetime. 

“Rose,” Shareen said softly, holding Rose’s hand. Rose looked up.

Shareen’s hair was strawberry blonde, long and curly, almost like coils. She straightened it almost every day since she was twelve and her mum let her use her straightener. She had brown eyes that she loves to frame with blue eye shadow, black eyeliner, and a little mascara. She had a mole on the back of her neck that she covered with makeup every time she pulled her hair up, and even sometimes when she didn’t. She despised _Bliss_ and loved _Burberry_. She would willingly fork over fifty quid for a tiny bottle of perfume, even if she hated the scent, because she loved collecting perfume bottles, especially the ones with fancy designs on them. She hated fish and only had a mild liking for chips because of Rose, but she loved ice cream and would eat it by the pint if allowed. She preferred coffee over tea any day. She’d admitted to crushes on twenty different boys throughout her adolescence. She was an amazing singer and could write the most beautiful songs, she actually had her A-levels, and she’d been lucky enough to be one of the kids in school that didn’t live on a council Estate, but she wasn’t unusually brave or smart, she didn’t have the spark the Doctor liked in his companions (she’d asked), nothing to help her move on in the music industry. She’d be better off trying to get into a university but she wanted to be a singer and damned if she’d give up. 

And how did Rose know all this? Because Shareen had been her best mate since primary school. They’d grown up together, they’d gone through puberty together, they’d skipped school together; they’d had crushes on the same guy, they’d spent hours at night talking, they helped each other with homework, they talked to each other about everything. Or they had, before Rose had gone off with Jimmy Stone. Shareen had seen through him, she’d tried to warn her, and had been hurt when Rose ignored her. But when Rose came back, Shareen was there for her, picking up the broken bits and putting them on right. 

But then Rose had met a madman who’d offered her the universe and she’d run into the blue box without looking back. She’d made an effort to contact Shareen to ensure there were no more incidents like last time just in case the Doctor made another piloting error.

Shareen didn’t really like the Doctor. She blamed him for exploiting the wanderlust in Rose’s soul even though she’d always known of Rose’s desire to go places, meet new people, try new things. After all, Jimmy had tried to exploit it, too, with his false promises and poison smiles. (Though Shareen admitted the Doctor, aka John, didn’t have the same feel to him that had alerted her to Jimmy Stone.) She blamed the Doctor for stealing away her best friend, for making her forget her friends and family for a whole year, and taking her away again almost immediately after she came back. 

“I’m fine, Ree,” Rose promised. “Really, I am. John is a good man and a good friend. I’m happy with him.”

“I just don’t want you to get hurt again, Rose,” Shareen whispered. “I know I offered you a place here if you ever need it, but I never, _ever_ want you to have to take me up on that.”

“I don’t plan to. It’s been…” she paused to remember what year it was for Shareen, “…three years and we’re not sick of each other yet. He hasn’t laid a hand on me or forced me to do anythin’ I don’t really want to do.”

“Hasn’t given you a ring, either,” Shareen noted.

Rose refused to look over at the Doctor. “I don’t care about that, Ree. I’ve been to a lot of places, places you can’t even imagine, seen so many cultures and traditions…really puts things into perspective. A ring is just a ring, doesn’t mean anythin’.”

Shareen’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “He been feedin’ you that?”

Rose shook her head. “No. I figured that out on my own. This,” she reached under her shirt and pulled out her TARDIS key, “was the first thing he ever really gave me. I know it’s not much, but that was when he promised he wouldn’t just dump me and swan off. He’s kept his promise. It ain't much, but this key means more to me than any stupid ring ever could.”

Shareen actually smiled then, something in her eyes softening, then they flicked over Rose’s shoulder and sparked. “Oi! We’re havin’ a girl talk here, mate. Go back to your paper.”

Rose turned her head. The Doctor was staring at her, mouth slightly open in surprise, his eyes wide. At Shareen’s words, he closed his mouth, swallowed, and went back to staring at the newspaper. Rose felt a blush creep up her cheeks but she didn’t care. He knew how she felt, even if she’d never said it, just as she knew how he felt. They saw it in each other’s eyes, felt it in every embrace and holding of hands—in every kiss he’d pressed to her head, cheeks, and recently, her lips. 

“Men,” Shareen grumbled, pulling Rose’s attention back to her friend. She smiled.

Later, when they were about to leave, Shareen grabbed the Doctor by his tie and yanked him down to her level. The Doctor let out an unmanly yelp, trying to pull away, but Shareen held firm. Costello women had a reputation for ferocious tempers that Rose knew from experience could match the Tyler’s. 

“Listen here, mate,” she said. “I don’t care if you’re goin at it like rabbits or whatever—“

“Ree!” 

“—but don’t you dare just leave her!”

“I won’t,” the Doctor said hastily. “I promised you before and I’ve kept it, haven’t I?”

Shareen narrowed her eyes, giving the Time Lord a look full of righteous anger and protectiveness for her friend, causing him to reconsider his earlier assessment about the lack of ‘spark’ in her. “You do and I don’t care if you crawl into the deepest, darkest jungle in Africa, I will come after you and make sure you don’t leave it ever again. She deserves more than that.”

“I know.” 

“And I don’t care if you are in some deep, darkle jungle in Africa—if Rose ever wants to come back and visit, you better be bookin’ a flight right then and there.”

The Doctor smiled and gave her a two-fingered salute. “Yes, ma’am.”

Shareen leaned forward and whispered one last thing into the Doctor’s ear, then stepped away and released his tie. 

That night in the TARDIS, which was still parked on Earth, the Doctor leaned against the head of Rose’s bed. The owner of the bed was currently sound asleep, curled against his side, while his fingers ran through her soft blonde hair. Shareen Costello’s words ran through his mind over and over.

_“She loves you, really loves you, and I think you love her, too. I don’t care what it is, but you better give her somethin’ better than a key.”_

He knew Rose was fond of her TARDIS key, she always wore it around her neck. She had it on now. He’d given her many things during their travels: various trinkets and oddities; clothes and makeup; flowers and food. But out of all of that, she valued that key more than anything else? 

Shareen had seen his love for her, and she hadn’t ever been around him much. Jackie had seen. Mickey had seen. Pete had seen. Jack had seen. Detective Inspector Bishop had seen. A bloody _Dalek_ had seen. _Everyone_ had seen. He was pretty sure Rose had seen.

He’d loved her when he gave her that key, even if he hadn’t realized it yet; he’d loved her. She’d been a bright, golden light that penetrated the darkness in his heart, and he’d been drawn to her like a moth to the flame. He’d given her the key because he trusted her, because he wanted her to know she was special, because he wanted her to know he wasn’t going to leave her. What else could he do or say that would top that? What else in the whole bloody universe could ever mean more?

_Shareen Costello, you certainly know how to give a bloke a headache._

The next day, they ventured out again for more chips. As they were out walking, the Doctor suddenly stopped and stared at a hospital a few blocks away. After a few moments of watching him watch the hospital, she asked what he was staring at.

“I noticed them yesterday,” he murmured. “And there’s more of them now. Plasma coils, at least a dozen of them, all gathering around that place.” 

Rose didn’t see anything. But he did, going on about his superior Time Lord biology again until she’d whacked his arm and told him to get on with it.

“Well, that’s not normal, for starters,” he said. “That doesn’t just happen. Someone or something is causing them. Oh, look at that…there’s more of them! They just keep building and building…”

“So, something’s going on in there?”

“Must be…why’s it always London?” he murmured, staring at the building intently for a long moment. And then abruptly he was grinning that manic grin that meant things were going to get interesting very soon. “Want to check it out?” 

He held out his hand. Well, Rose had wanted normalcy, and when you lived with the Doctor…

She grinned at him, lacing her fingers with his, and that was all the answer he needed.


	2. In the Hospital Again

It hadn’t occurred to Rose until they were at the desk that the only way to access a hospital thoroughly enough without disguising themselves as doctors was to be patients, or a patient and the patient’s husband, because the Doctor couldn’t pose as a patient as long as he had two beating hearts. Humanity was a bit wary of aliens at the moment, and anything with two hearts was definitely not of this world, and so far everything from out there had been hostile. 

Nope. It was better that Rose be the one in the hospital pyjamas and the Doctor be the concerned husband at her bedside, away from any machines and tools that would give him away. So here she was, filling out registration forms. She came to one of the basic questions…and froze. Her age. It wanted to know her age. Her name was easy. Her birthdate was easy. But her current age was a different matter entirely. Because, in all honestly, Rose Tyler wasn’t sure how old she was anymore. Twenty-one, maybe? 

It was hard to keep track of time in the TARDIS. After all this time, it didn’t seem so important. Not like in the beginning. She’d thought to keep track of the days going by with a calendar, but she had no idea where to start counting from. The day after she’d run into the TARDIS without looking back was a good day to start, but exactly how long ago was that?

She’d tried asking the Doctor but after learning the reason for her curiosity, he’d stared at her in disbelief. “All of time and space…and you want a calendar?”

“Yes, yes, I do!” she’d exclaimed and had managed to get the number of days from him with little more fuss after that, though he tried several times to point out the flaws in her plan. 

The second challenge was marking the passage of days. The TARDIS had been helpful then, a clock materializing on Rose’s bedside before she had the chance to ask the Doctor.

Oh, it had worked out in the beginning. She was meticulous in her task, always marking a day off every time she went to sleep, which was pretty regular, except when things happened and they were forced to stay on some planet for whatever reason. She’d always asked the Doctor to convert local time for her and he did so, albeit with some annoyance at first, and Rose managed to keep track of the days.

Then they arrived back on the TARDIS after a particularly exhausting few days on a planet where Rose had accidentally insulted a child of a very proud noble family and what followed included exploding fruit, a prison cell, escaping, and a mob of the angry humanoid ferret-like creatures that were indigenous to the planet. Needless to say, Rose had been tired and she’d collapsed into bed without marking off her calendar. It wasn’t until a few days later that she realized what she’d done, or rather, _hadn’t_ done, and immediately went in search of her Time Lord. 

This happened several times over the period of two months and finally one day when Rose asked, he’d sighed with great annoyance, and given her a withering look. It wasn’t that it was difficult to calculate things for her, it was child’s play, but he really didn’t see the point of bothering with something as trivial as a calendar to keep track of time’s passing and asked Rose why she thought she needed a calendar. She came up with several reasons that he’d shot down as reasons why she wanted one, not why she needed one. She’d scowled at him, a real Tyler look, one that he didn’t fancy being on the receiving end of since he knew a slap was likely to follow, so he gave her real answers. 

_To keep track of holidays_. Why? He could just land them there whenever he wanted. 

_To keep track of the months._ Again, why? A month was a measure of time that was completely meaningless almost everywhere in the Universe. 

_To know when it’s my mum’s birthday_. Time. Machine. 

_So I can know when I turn twenty._ He didn’t have a suitable answer for that one. Landing the TARDIS on her birth date wouldn’t work—she wouldn’t have aged a year. It would just be another day. He’d stared at her for a long minute, debating. It had to be important to her or else she wouldn’t have mentioned it and he felt compelled to help her. Already he’d found himself going to ridiculous lengths to keep her happy, his past selves scoffed at this strange desire to please his companion.

Finally, he’d asked the date and promised to let her know when enough relative time had passed. And he had, not long before the Gamestation. While she was asleep, Jack had snuck off and got a cake and some chips, and the Doctor had obliged her request to take her home. They couldn’t land on the date of her actual twentieth birthday, as Rose was technically still missing as of then, but Jackie was more than pleased to know he’d bothered keeping track for her. 

She was pretty sure a year had passed since then. It certainly _felt_ like a year. But the Doctor hadn’t said anything. Maybe he’d forgotten? Or maybe he just didn’t want to mention it because it would upset her that she couldn’t go home this time. Jackie Tyler was gone, living in a parallel universe with Mickey, and that universe’s version of Pete Tyler. 

Rose managed to swallow past the sudden lump in her throat and gave her head a small shake, taking a deep breath and letting it out quickly. She’d have to ask him. She could put twenty-one down and be done with it, but she honestly wanted to know.

“Doctor, how old am I?”

The Doctor turned, frowning at her. “What?”

“How old am I? Remember, you promised me you’d let me know when a year had passed.”

“I did, didn’t I?” he murmured to himself. He leaned back, staring into space for a moment, then sighed. “You’re twenty-one,” he said at last. “Your birthday was a few weeks ago. Not long after…after Donna.”

Not long after saying goodbye to her mum, then. Her ‘birthday’ must have occurred sometime during the grief that followed. No wonder he hadn’t mentioned it.

“Oh,” she said. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything.” 

“It’s fine,” she said briskly, scrawling _21_ into the blank. 

Only then did the Doctor realize why she’d asked, and he’d chuckled. “Look at the date today, Rose.” He gestured to the little flip calendar on the reception desk. She stared for a moment blankly, then realized what he was getting at, gritted her teeth and changed the _21_ to _22_.

Time travel was complicated business.

After returning the clipboard to the receptionist for her since Rose was supposed to be feeling ill, the Doctor returned to the waiting area and went over the list of things she was supposed to be feeling that made her want to check into the hospital. They’d come late in the day, making her problem seem severe enough to keep her overnight, but not enough that she’d need to be closely monitored, giving the Doctor a chance to do some snooping. The nature of her problem had regulated them to a public ward, and that meant no privacy except for the curtain and no telly for entertainment as they waited for night to fall. 

A nurse came by to bring Rose a light meal and addressed the Time Lord who was watching his companion with amusement as she regarded the meager food she’d presented with. “Are you planning on staying the night, Mr. Tyler?” 

“Just John, please, and yes,” he said, smiling at the man. 

“Well, we have a lounge and a canteen downstairs if you need food. I can bring you a blanket if you’d like.”

“I’ll be fine,” the Doctor assured him. “Thank you.”

The nurse smiled and left them be. 

“Cranberry juice,” Rose growled in disgust, holding up the plastic container. “Who even likes this?”

“I might. I haven’t had a chance to try any in this body.” The Doctor looked at the plastic container curiously and held out his hand. “Give it here.” 

She handed it to him and he tore open the seal, lifting the cup to his mouth. She waited, watching his face as his nose wrinkled ever so slightly. He swallowed, flicking his tongue a few times, and smacking his lips. He looked down at the container and shrugged. “Eh, I’ve had worse. Better than pears, at least. I don’t think that’s…ah there, you see?” he turned it and she squinted to read the tiny print. “ _Made from concentrate._ Figures. After we’re done here, I’m going to take you to a place with proper fruit juice, nothing processed.”

“Where’s that, then?” she asked.

He grinned. “Earth, of course, a thousand or so years into the past. We’ll find a nice pub, or something.”

“With your driving, we’ll probably end up in the crusades.” 

“Oi! My driving is not that bad!”

“Twelve months,” she reminded him lightly. “1979…1879.” 

He gave her a look. “Eat your food, Rose,” he said before finishing off the cranberry juice.

Rose was tempted to ignore him and the unappealing meal she’d been presented with, but her stomach decided to remind her then that she hadn’t had anything to eat today except chips. The Doctor heard and gestured to the tray firmly. Sighing, Rose picked up the spoon from her tray and ate the only appetizing thing on there: applesauce. Around midnight, after the overhead lights had been dimmed for sleeping, her hunger roared back in full force and she glowered at the Doctor who had taken to examining the various tools and bits on the wall behind her to occupy himself. It took a minute or so, but he finally noticed her glare.

“What?”

“You had to say I had stomach pains, didn’t you?” she hissed. 

“What?” he asked, bemused. 

“They think I got something wrong in my stomach. The only thing I’ve had to eat today is those chips and the applesauce, Doctor.”

“Well, you’ve still got more food here on the…” he trailed off when her glare intensified. “Sorry? Um…” He dug around his jacket pockets. “Let me see if I’ve got anything…ah, no…nope…paperclips, you don’t like paperclips, do you? Didn’t think so. Jelly babies? No, you probably wouldn’t want those—they’ve been in here a while. You might actually have stomach problems, then.” He moved on to the pockets of the blue suit he’d discovered in the wardrobe the other day and had taken a liking to. “Oh, here, I’ve got a banana,” he offered, producing the piece of fruit. 

It didn’t look too brown or bruised so Rose accepted it gratefully. 

“I’ll sneak you something better from the canteen tomorrow when it opens,” he promised, standing up. “But for now, you should try to get some sleep. I’m going to go take a look around. Try and figure out why someone’s got coils around this hospital.”

“What do they do?” Rose asked. “Those plasma coils, I mean.”

“Oh, a number of things, really. There’s probably something going on in here and now’d be the best time to check it out. Will you be alright?” 

Rose swallowed, then smiled, trying to appear normal. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be fine. Go on. Sooner we figure this out, sooner we can go.”

The Doctor gave her a long look before leaning down to kiss her forehead. “I’ll be back soon.” 

As soon as he left, pulling the curtains closed behind him, Rose sagged and tilted her head back to stare at the dark ceiling. She knew he probably hadn’t been fooled. No, she was not all right, not even close. She hadn’t been able to sleep without him near since Canary Wharf. Before then she’d preferred having him near when she slept, but she didn’t panic if she woke up in the middle of the night after a nightmare and he wasn’t around. 

The old nightmares of her mum being turned into one of the Cybermen had returned after the incident, taking turns with the rest of her nightmares about that day. The pull of the Void becoming too much and sucking her in, or the Doctor being sucked in, because the Doctor’s lever had malfunctioned and he’d had to let go of his clamp to set it right. If he hadn’t been as strong as he was, she would’ve lost him to the Void, and she would have been alone and earthbound.

One night, she’d seen Pete (who had returned to their universe for a second, just to make sure Rose was alright and then had left as quickly as he’d arrived) get sucked into the Void before he could teleport away. Sometimes the nightmares mixed. The most common was the Cyber version of her mother appearing, unaffected by the Void, and shoving both her and the Doctor into the Void, or just one of them.

After the first time she woke up without him, screaming so loud he’d heard her on the other side of the TARDIS and found her curled up in the space between her bed and the wall, he took to spending all night with her. Sometimes he’d sit off to the side and tinker with something, sometimes he’d sit silent vigil over her all night, and sometimes they’d both fall asleep in each other’s arms. 

She’d pretend if any nurses came by to check on her, but she was absolutely certain she wouldn’t be getting any sleep until the Doctor was back in the chair next to her. And he probably knew it, too. He’d be worried, distracted, and unable to focus completely on his search. He’d cut it short. He’d be back a lot sooner than he should. She hated being a burden, though he’d deny she was.

Rose closed her eyes and sighed. In the back of her mind, the place where the TARDIS always was, she felt a pulse of comfort. Ever since the Gamestation, even though she couldn’t really remember doing things as the Bad Wolf, she had been closer to the TARDIS. Always feeling her, always sensing. The only time she’d lost that connection was on Krop Tor. The Doctor had what happened after she looked into the TARDIS, though she got the feeling he’d omitted some parts. He said he’d pulled it all out of her, but she now knew, even if he didn’t, that whatever he’d done hadn’t worked, not entirely. 

In the Torchwood lab, when the Doctor had activated those Huon particles, Donna’s entire body had glowed. Rose had heard singing. It was a familiar song, like something she’d dreamed once but had never quite forgotten. It made her feel safe and powerful. It had made her want to curl up on the ground and just listen. It made her want to throw her head back and howl to the universe.

All eyes had been on Donna, then, no one had noticed Rose, until the Empress had both girls fastened up with Lance and activated the particles, trying to draw them out. But they hadn’t wanted to leave Rose, and her entire body had rebelled. Donna had noticed, then, when Rose had screamed. Rose’s eyes had apparently glowed vibrant gold while the singing echoed soundly in her head and she’d lost consciousness. Apparently her screams and the sight of her unconscious had been enough to rob the Doctor of any mercy he may have been feeling. When she’d woken up later on the TARDIS, Donna had questioned her softly while the Doctor piloted them, and Rose hadn’t been able to explain it, not in a way Donna would understand, only asking she didn’t tell the Doctor. 

Rose opened her eyes again. She’d have to tell him sooner or later. She’d chosen later, if only to avoid putting more stress on him. _Deadly,_ he’d said. They would’ve killed Donna, they’d forced him to regenerate, but they still existed within Rose. 

_“Look, inside your eyes, you’ve seen it too. The wolf, there is something of the wolf about you.”_

The Bad Wolf created herself, a unity between the ancient ship and the young human, both of whom loved the Doctor, to save his life. Was it so hard to believe that neither of them had truly wanted to sever that connection? That it remained: a small link, unnoticeable unless someone played around with Huon particles? It sure explained what the wolf had said, why the words Bad Wolf kept popping up even now (she’d seen them earlier on a flyer on a bulletin board in the lobby), and why Rose could always sense their ship.

Deadly. But they weren’t killing her, were they? The Doctor would have noticed by now. They were still there, though. That had to mean something. And now that she knew, now that she was back on her feet, the longer she waited to tell him meant the angrier he’d be. 

She’d tell him, she decided, when they’d sorted the hospital out and they were safely in the Time Vortex. 

As she’d predicted, the clock registered that not even an hour passed before the curtains rustled and instead of a nurse, she saw the lanky form of her Doctor step through. She opened her eyes immediately and stared at him as he crossed to sit in the chair beside her bed again.

“You’re not asleep.” He didn’t sound surprised. 

“Doctor,” she whispered, “you can’t tell me you searched the entire hospital yet.”

“Didn’t need to,” he said. 

“What did you find?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I scanned a few places, poked my nose in a few others. There isn’t any odd or alien technology—nothing that Earth shouldn’t already have, anyway.”

“Earth has alien technology? Like what?”

“Oh…microwave ovens,” he said matter-of-factly.

Rose blinked, nonplussed. “Seriously?” He nodded. “Microwave ovens were made by aliens?”

“Of course!” the Doctor said. “Using electromagnetic waves to rapidly heat food. Do you really think some stupid ape could come up with something as clever as that?”

“So the bloke who invented it…”

“Yep, alien,” he said and then abruptly his demeanor changed. “Or he worked for Torchwood.”

And with that, the humor was sucked from the atmosphere. Rose looked away, staring intently at the solid blue curtains surrounding the bed, and the Doctor cleared his throat. “So, ah, whatever the reason for those plasma coils, it isn’t an object. Which means it’s probably a person.”

Silence met his words as they both contemplated what that meant. Rose looked down at her hands. “Doctor. There’s hundreds of people here.”

“I know.”

“Patients and staff.”

“I know.” 

“So…we’re just gonna wait until something happens?”

“I’ll try to get a look at patient and staff records tomorrow,” he said. “Find out if anyone’s been admitted recently with unusual symptoms, or any new employees. Might look for zippers on foreheads. …Though from the looks of those coils, I’d say we don’t have long.”

“Until what?”

“Until something happens, because you can’t have that many coils built up without repercussions…unless, of course, someone is causing them to build up on purpose, which also means they should be along soon.”

“Fantastic,” she grumbled, then yawned loudly. “Ah, sorry.”

The Doctor gazed at her, his features soft, and lifted his hand to stroke her hair. “We’ll worry about it tomorrow. You sleep now, Rose. I’m not going anywhere.” 

She smiled at him, shifting around in the bed until she was comfortable, then slipping her hand into his hand while the other continued to brush a gentle, soothing rhythm across her head. He leaned forward, pressing a gentle kiss to her temple, and after a moment began humming to her softly. The TARDIS pitched in, sending a gentle, comforting hum into the back of Rose’s mind. Rose fell asleep to the voice of the man she loved in her ears and the voice of the ship she loved in her head.


	3. To the Moon

Rose jerked her hand away from the faucet with a sharp hiss of pain. It’d shocked her. The water faucet had shocked her. She reached forward carefully and prodded the metal nozzle several times but received no more electric shocks.

“Huh,” she muttered, biting her tongue. Well, that was certainly odd, and considering why she was even in this hospital to begin with, odd was to be expected. Making a mental note to tell the Doctor, she turned the knob, cupping her hands under the flow. She brought the water up to her face, washing the remains of sleep and the last traces of her makeup. 

She considered her reflection. _“You even look like him.”_ She did, especially free of the makeup. Her face was a bit narrower, her eyes definitely harder than they’d been when she was a simple shop girl that the last Time Lord had happened across…or even harder than they were just a few weeks ago when she and the Doctor had walked across the Powell Estate, laughing, hand in hand as they went to visit her mum. Rose swallowed, not wanting to go down that track this early in the morning. 

Splashing another handful of water onto her face to wash away the beginnings of tears, Rose brushed her teeth with the odd toothbrush the Doctor had produced from one of his pockets, and turned off the faucet. 

The Doctor was waiting for her by her bed and his small smile stretched into a full-blown grin when she came into view. Rose couldn’t help but smile back. His joy was infectious. She settled back down into bed and allowed him to tuck the covers around her and sat on the edge of her bed, looking every bit the doting, concerned husband he was supposed to be.

“Doctor,” she said. “When I was in the bathroom, the sink shocked me.”

“Why?” he asked, only half-serious. “Did they change the way sinks look, or something?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, I mean it _literally_ shocked me.”

His face grew serious. “Like static electricity, only sharper?”

“Yeah.”

He inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. He turned his gaze to the windows and Rose did the same. There was nothing out there except the London skyline. He seemed to be waiting for something. Without warning, a jagged line of light flashed outside the window, and vanished.

“There, did you see?” he asked.

“Yeah, what was that? Lightning?”

“ _That_ ,” he said as another one flashed, “is a plasma coil. They’re getting so thick that even you lot can see them now. I need to go have a look at those records now—will you be—”

He was interrupted by the arrival of a man in a suit with an entourage of young adults in white coats. Medical students, Rose wagered. Smart, equipped with A-levels, bright and promising futures ahead of them—staring at her with calculating eyes, ready to figure out what was wrong with her to impress their superior. 

The Doctor squeezed Roses hand reassuringly and then plastered on a big grin. “Good morning,” he crowed to the crowd.

Rose simply smiled. 

“Good morning to you both,” the man said. Rose recognized him as Mr. Stoker, one of the doctors who’d popped by yesterday. “Now then, how are you feeling, Mrs. Tyler?”

She tilted her head to the side a bit. “Well, I’ve been better.” 

“Rose Tyler, admitted yesterday with severe abdominal pains. Jones,” he said to the young black woman beside him. “Why don’t you see what you can find? Amaze me.”

Jones nodded, walking around the bed and pulling a stethoscope from her pocket. “Stomach pains? Then eating chips wasn’t very clever, was it?” she asked Rose.

Rose blinked. “What?”

“On Chancellor’s Street this morning. You walked up to me eating chips and offered me one.”

Rose gawked at her and the Doctor chuckled lightly. “Rose, did you nip out for chips this morning? I could’ve sworn you said you were going to the loo.”

“I did, I mean, I went to the loo, but I didn’t leave the building.” Rose was frowning now. 

“Well, that’s weird,” Jones frowned, “because it looked like you. Have you got a sister?”

Rose couldn’t help but flinch at that. For all she knew, she could have a little sister by now. But if the child Jackie had been carrying was a girl, she’d never know. “N-no,” Rose said. “No. It’s just me. Just _us_ ,” she corrected, meeting the Doctor’s gaze and hating the regret in his eyes. He blamed himself.

“As time passes and I grow ever more infirm and weary, Miss Jones,” Mr. Stoker interrupted. 

“Sorry. Right.” She brandished her stethoscope. Rose inhaled and exhaled slowly while Jones moved the stethoscope around her chest and stomach.

“I weep for future generations. Are you having trouble locating the heart, Miss Jones?” Rose shot a glare at the older man.

“I was listening to her breathing, too,” Jones explained, drawing back. “Her heart rate is normal and her lungs sound clear.”

“The problem is not in her lungs,” Mr. Stoker said impatiently. 

“Um…she could be pregnant?”

“I’m not, trust me.” Rose said, not looking at the Doctor.

“And you rather failed basic techniques by not consulting first with the patient’s chart.” Mr. Stoker informed Jones and bent to pick up the clipboard at the end of Rose’s bed. Her ears heard a faint crackle, like a static shock, and he immediately dropped it. 

“That happened to me this morning,” Jones said.

“I had the same thing on the door handle,” a male student added.

“And me, on the lift,” piped a dark-haired woman.

Rose and the Doctor looked at each other as Mr. Stoker went on about how it was to be expected because of a thunderstorm. They knew better.

“—lightning is a form of static electricity, as was first proven by…anyone?” Mr. Stoker looked at his students with hopeful expectancy. But the answer didn’t come from one of the medical students.

“Benjamin Franklin,” the Doctor said matter-of-factly.

Mr. Stoker looked mildly impressed. “Correct—”

But the Doctor was already going. “My mate Ben, that was a day and a half. Did I ever tell you about that, Rose? I got rope burns off that kite, and then I got soaked…”

They were staring at him. “Quite…” Mr. Stoker said slowly.

Rose elbowed him sharply, willing him to shut up before they decided he was the one that should be in a hospital bed. But the Doctor didn’t seem to realize anything was off. “…And then I got electrocuted!” he finished with a broad grin.

This time Rose smacked his arm. He leaned away, looking like a kicked puppy. “Sorry,” she apologized to the perplexed crowd around the bed. “He thinks he’s funny.” 

“I am funny!” he protested. “Just ask Abbott and Costello. Now that— _that_ was a day.”

“You’re a menace, you are.” Rose shook her head.

“And you stayed with me anyway.” 

“I must be mad,” she said, but she was grinning and he was too, and just like that the Doctor’s comment turned from worrisome to just a young couple’s banter.

Mr. Stoker smiled. “Someone will be along later to talk with you further. Moving on!” He motioned for the students to follow. 

Miss Jones turned back to look at them with a small smile on her face. The couple smiled back. The moment she turned away, though, Rose smacked the Doctor’s arm again.

“Hey!” he protested, leaning away, looking every bit like a kicked puppy.

“You _stupid_ alien git!” Rose hissed. “I thought the whole point of me playing patient was so you didn’t have to get in a hospital bed. Keep talkin’ like that and they’ll think you’re mad!”

“Oh, don’t worry about me.” He waved off her concerns. “I’ve been in a psychiatric ward before. Got out just fine.”

Rose stared at him, her mouth open in shock. “Do you mean to say,” she said after a moment, “that you escaped from the madhouse?” 

“Yeah.”

Her grin widened and her tongue poked out between her teeth. “Oh, that makes so much sense.”

He realized what she was getting at and managed to look affronted despite the grin threatening to show. “Oi!” But she was laughing, and it was infectious. 

The crowd of medical students passed them again on their way out. Some of them, like Jones, smiled at the sight of the happy young couple that seemed oblivious to the world around them. Some of them frowned, wondering why someone who was supposed to be sick and in pain was laughing like that.

When the students and Mr. Stoker were gone, the Doctor sobered. “I better get moving. Those plasma coils are getting thicker…and if people are starting to get shocked then we’re running out of time. Don’t leave this room unless you absolutely have to, Rose.”

“Okay,” she said, stretching up to kiss his cheek. “Be careful.”

“I’m always careful,” he said.

“Oh, God,” she muttered. “Hey, don’t forget, you’re supposed to swipe somethin’ from the canteen for me.” 

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, sliding off the bed, and left the ward quickly. 

Rose sighed, leaning back in the bed again. She hated just sitting around not doing anything. She’d rather be with the Doctor so she could at least keep him out of trouble or point out the things he missed. Like the bloody London Eye. 

Overhead, thunder began to rumble ominously. Rose couldn’t help but shiver. _“A storm is coming._ ” He’d said.

Rose was brought a light meal of applesauce and orange juice and she ate it slowly, savoring each bite, watching the rain trickle down the glass of the windows. Lightning flashed. But it wasn’t really lightning. So was that thunder not thunder? And what about the rain? She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong with the storm. Something was really, really wrong.

_**Fear**_ flared in the back of Rose’s mind where the TARDIS was. The juice slipped from Rose’s fingers and fell to the floor with a splash, but she hardly noticed. The TARDIS was afraid; she was trying to warn them. Something was wrong. Something was really, really wrong. 

The Doctor. Where was he? If Rose could feel it, he definitely could.

A nurse came over to see if everything was all right and noticed Rose, pale and shaking, in her bed.

“Are you okay, miss?” she asked.

Rose looked at her with wide, terrified eyes. “I…”

The nurse called for one of her colleagues by the window but none of them responded. They were all staring outside at the rain and after a second, Rose realized why. She pushed the covers away and slid out of bed and walked slowly towards the windows.

“Miss—” the nurse tried again, putting her hand on Rose’s shoulder.

“Oh, my God,” Rose murmured, staring outside.

The rain was going up.

Beside her, the nurse gasped.

_She saw her face and the Doctor’s, and a voice cried out in a language without words and there was fear—_

Light flared outside the window, blinding and white, and then the whole world shook like a violent earthquake had struck. Rose lost her balance and fell to the floor with a scream. The lights flickered and things fell and people screamed and glass shattered as it hit the floor and Rose tried to get to her feet but was knocked over straight away and tossed around like a doll and she couldn’t tell which way was up and which way was down and the TARDIS’s fear in her mind faded and _it’s Krop Tor all over again and where is the Doctor—_

And then it stopped.

Everything was silent for a moment, except for the sobs and gasps as people tried to breathe. Rose did a quick check—all limbs intact, no broken bones, but she was going to have some serious bruises later—then pushed herself up. She wobbled for a second, but managed to stay upright, and then looked out the window. Night. It was nighttime but it couldn’t be because it was lunch time not sixty seconds ago, unless they were pulled through time, but how could you pull a whole building through time? 

Extreme distance, time differences, and the Beast were the only reasons she’d ever lost connection to the TARDIS, and she was fairly sure the Beast was gone. So time or space. Brilliant.

A doctor near the window pulled himself up and stared out. “We’re…oh my God…we’re….” He said quietly, but his voice carried in the near silence that became complete at his words. Others near the window looked, Rose took a step forward, and all eyes saw the gray, rocky expanse where there should be London, and above them—empty space.

Somewhere in another ward, a woman let out a high-pitched scream of terror and all hell broke loose. People screamed and cried and ran. Some curled up on the floor, sobbing hysterically. Panic and chaos and the air stank with fear. Rose stood silent through the panic, staring out the window. She knew that landscape. She’d seen it before from the safety of the TARDIS. 

“ROSE!” 

The Doctor’s voice sent a jolt through her system and she turned to see a skinny streak of blue tearing across the room before she was crushed against the chest of a terrified Time Lord, whose double hearts beat rapidly against her own. He held her for a moment, gasping in relief.

“Are you alright?” he asked, his voice muffled by her hair.

“We’re on the moon!” she gasped.

“I got that. Are _you_ alright?” He pulled back to stare at her, running his hands across her face and arms to check for damage.

“A bit bruised, but I’ve had worse,” she said. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry.” His shoulders sagged in relief at her words and the fear in his eyes dimmed, replaced by seriousness. “I can’t feel the TARDIS.”

“I know,” he said, looking around, and ushered her towards her bed. “Me neither. Get dressed, we need to get a look at what’s going on.” His gaze swept up and down her body. “Unless you want to run in that.”

“All right!” a woman said loudly. “Everyone back to bed!” It was the medical student, Jones, who was surprisingly calm in contrast to the dark-haired woman with her, who looked ready to lose it. “We’ve got an emergency but we’ll sort it out.”

The Doctor pulled the curtains closed around them and Rose was already pulling the gown off. “Before that light, the rain was going up. What was that?”

“H2O scoop. That’s how they got us up here. And it explains the plasma coils.” He handed Rose her clothes, a pair of jeans and a light green t-shirt, keeping his eyes averted out of politeness, though it didn’t matter to her at this point. From outside the curtains they could hear Jones talking. 

“If the air was going to get sucked out it would have happened straight away, but it didn’t. So how come?”

Rose was still pulling on her trainers when the Doctor pushed the curtains aside. “Very good point!” he declared. “Brilliant, in fact. What was your name?”

“Martha.”

“And it was Jones, wasn’t it?”

Martha Jones nodded. 

“Well then, Martha Jones, the question is, how are we still breathing?”

Rose slid off the bed, straightening her shirt, and moved towards them as the other woman, growing ever more hysterical, exclaimed that they couldn’t be. 

“Obviously we are so don’t waste my time,” the Doctor snapped. 

“Doctor.” Rose gave him a sharp look and put her hands on the woman’s shoulders. “Hey, hey look at me. It’s gonna be alright.” The woman’s tearing eyes met hers. “What’s your name?”

“Julia Swales,” she sobbed. 

“Alright then, Julia. My name’s Rose. Don’t worry; this is nothin’ too bad. We’ve been through worse, me an’ him.” She jerked her head in the general direction of the Doctor who was talking to Martha. “We’ll get this sorted. Just stay calm. You’re a doctor, yeah?”

“In training.”

“Well, aren’t doctors supposed to be brave? Aren’t they’re supposed to keep their heads in a crisis? Look around, Julia. Julia! Stop crying and look around. See all these people? They’re your patients. You’ve got to take care of them. Do you understand? You got to. I know you’re scared, I know, and you’ve got a right to be. I’m a bit scared, too, but you gotta take care of these people. If you don’t, who will?”

Julia looked like she wanted to keep crying, but Rose’s words must have gotten through to her because she nodded, squaring her shoulders. “Right…right…” she nodded but her eyes flicked to the window again and her lips trembled.

“Just don’t look if it helps,” Rose encouraged. 

“Rose,” the Doctor said. “We’re goin’ out.”

Rose turned, letting her hands drop. “Out? Outside? Can we?”

“I don’t know.” He grinned. “But it’s worth a shot. Might give us a clue.”

“Alright,” she said. 

“Not her, though. She’d hold us up.”

Rose didn’t argue, but turned back to Julia and gave her an encouraging look and put her hand on Julia’s shoulder once more. “Be a doctor,” she whispered.

Julia nodded, trembling. Rose gave her the best smile she could then bolted after the Doctor and Martha. The hallways were packed with people moving every which way or huddled against the wall. Rose and the Doctor weaved through with ease and Martha followed through the narrow paths they found.

“I’m Rose.” Rose smiled at the other woman, holding out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Martha.”

Martha smiled at Rose incredulously and shook her hand. “Likewise, but is this the time?”

“You get used to this sort of stuff when you’re friends with him.” She gestured with her thumb at the Doctor.

“Friends? But—”

“Here we are!” The Doctor pointed to a sign that read ‘Patients Lounge’ and stopped in front of a pair of double doors just down from the lounge. “Shall we?”

Rose grinned, her tongue poking out, and together they pushed the doors open and the three of them stepped onto the balcony. It was a bit colder, but not like standing in the open doorway of the TARDIS while they were in space. But they definitely were in space. Any doubts she may have had before were completely erased as she gazed at her planet in the sky, hundreds of thousands of miles away. She inhaled deeply and was pleased to discover that air filled her lungs.

“We’ve got air!” Martha gasped in wonder as they walked forward. “How does that work?”

“Just be glad it does,” the Doctor said seriously. 

“Doctor,” Rose said quietly. “She was afraid. I felt her fear, just before we…” 

“I know. I felt it, too,” he murmured. 

“I can feel her now, sort of. But it’s…faint. We’ve been farther than this before, haven’t we?”

He nodded. “Something’s restricting the telepathic link.”

“I’ve got a party tonight.” Martha Jones said, interrupting their quiet conversation. They watched her struggling to take in the enormity of what was in front of her. She looked at them. “It’s my brother’s twenty-first. My mother’s going to be really…really…” Her voice broke at the end and she shook her head quickly.

“Are you okay?” the Doctor asked gently. 

“Yeah.”

“Sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Want to go back in? We’ll be okay if you—”

“No way,” Martha interrupted. “I mean, we could die any minute, but all at the same time…it’s beautiful. How many people want to go to the moon? And here we are!”

Rose looked up at the Doctor and smiled. The Doctor’s face softened and he slipped is hand into hers. “Here we are,” he agreed. 

“Almost prettier than Woman Wept,” Rose said, turning her gaze to the horizon again. “It’s…so small. I mean, I know it’s small in the grand scheme…but lookin’ at it like this…on the moon!”

“Standing in the earthlight,” he murmured.

“You two are a bit comfortable with this. What do you think happened?” Martha asked them.

The Doctor smiled. “What do you think?” Testing her, Rose realized, to see if she was worth keeping around. 

Martha considered for a second. “Extraterrestrial,” she decided. “It’s got to be. I don’t know, a few years ago that would’ve sounded mad, but these days?” she laughed once without humor. “That spaceship flying into Big Ben, Christmas… those… Cybermen things.” She paused for a moment. “I had a cousin. Adeola. She worked at Canary Wharf. She never came home.” 

If she’d been looking, she would’ve seen Rose flinch as if she’d been struck and the Doctor’s expression darken.

“I thought you looked familiar,” he murmured. 

Martha turned. “What?” she asked quietly.

“Your cousin looked like you, didn’t she?”

“What—I mean—how…? Yeah, she did.” 

The Doctor nodded. “I’m sorry. We were there. In the battle. She was…it was…” he trailed off, unable to find the right words. How could he tell her the that her cousin never came home was because she had been controlled by the Cybermen and was partially responsible for bringing the army into this reality? 

“I lost my mum.” Rose’s voice shook, and the Doctor squeezed her hand comfortingly. 

“I’m sorry,” Martha said quietly, then swallowed and steeled herself for what had to be done. She was a doctor, they were her patients—like Rose had told Julia—it was her job to keep a level head and to make everything better, even though she didn’t have a clue what to do. “I promise you, Mr. and Mrs. Tyler, we will find a way out. If we can travel to the moon, then we can travel back. There’s got to be the way.”

“It’s not Tyler,” the Doctor said, pulling away from Rose to look over the sides of the balcony. “That’s not my real name.”

“Who are you, then?”

“I’m the Doctor,” he said. He crossed to the other side and looked over the edge.

“Me too.” Martha laughed. “If I can pass my exams. What is it, then, Doctor Tyler?”

“Just the Doctor.”

She made a face. “How do you mean, just the Doctor?” 

“Just…the Doctor.” He said as if he couldn’t see the problem with it.

“What, people call you ‘the Doctor’?” 

“I just call him Doctor,” Rose offered. 

“Well, I’m not,” Martha said stubbornly. “As far as I’m concerned, you’ve got to earn that title. And what about you? Is your real name ‘the Rose’?”

“No.” Rose grinned. “It’s just Rose.”

“Right, let’s have a look.” The Doctor leaned down and picked up a pebble then lobbed out into space. “There must be some kind of—” the rock collided with an invisible wall that rippled from the force but remained intact “—force field. Keeping the air in.”

They were silent for a moment as they considered this. Rose’s blood felt cold. The force field was keeping the air in, protecting them from the vacuum of space. It had to be impenetrable or else the air would escape. But even if she and the Doctor could break through it, they had nowhere to go. There was nothing outside the force field for them. No TARDIS waiting to whisk them to safety. Whatever the fate awaited the people in this place, it was theirs as well. 

“Doctor,” Rose said quietly as something else dawned on her. “Force fields, they don’t create air, do they?”

“No.”

“And there’s no atmosphere here. Nowhere to get more air from.”

“No.”

“So…what happens when we run out?” 

The Doctor looked at her then, eyes ancient and sad, but with a hint of anger beneath the surface. Without breaking Rose’s gaze he asked, “Martha, how many people in this hospital?”

“I don’t know. A thousand?”

The Doctor swallowed. “One thousand people. Suffocating. That’s what happens.”

Rose put her hands over her mouth and closed her eyes. “Oh, God.” She sucked in a breath of air sharply. “We’re gonna sort this, right, Doctor?”

As the words left her mouth, something rumbled overhead, and Rose recognized the sound of approaching spaceships. Heads snapped up and eyes took in the massive cylindrical ship that passed over the hospital, followed by two identical ones that completely dwarfed the hospital. The Doctor’s hand found hers again and squeezed so tightly that Rose could feel the dual pulse thrumming in his veins. Three legs extended from the lower sides of each ship, bending into sturdy legs as they descended. There was something familiar about the ships, Rose realized. She’d seen them before somewhere. A picture maybe? 

From inside came the sounds of humans panicking, but the three on the balcony didn’t look away from the ships. A hatch dropped down from the bottom of each and out marched a single figure in black, followed by rows of two, each wearing the same outfit, and marching in time. And behind the column, another emerged, identical in shape and size. Rose tried to count and gave up seconds later. There had to be at least two hundred of the hulking black creatures marching towards the hospital, which suddenly felt thin and weak under her feet.

“Aliens,” Martha exclaimed. “That’s aliens.” Rose looked at her and the medical student met her gaze with fear. “Real, proper aliens.”

“Judoon.” The Doctor said darkly.

Rose’s eyes widened and she looked up at him, realizing now why the ships were familiar. It was months ago, the Doctor had landed them on a thriving moon that was famous for its vast collection of every form of art. She’d stepped from the TARDIS, only to be immediately pulled back in by the Doctor. “Oh we’re definitely in the wrong time,” he’d said, slamming the doors shut, not before she’d glimpsed a gigantic cylindrical ship sitting on a hill in the distance, a menacing presence looming over the city. It had taken a bit of persuading, but she’d finally managed to wheedle out the name of the aliens who used those types of ships.

Judoon. Humanoid rhinos with heads as thick as their skin, intelligent, but daft, and with more than enough muscles. Mercenaries. What did they want with a British hospital? 

“Inside,” the Doctor barked, pulling her towards the doors. “Now.”

“Do you think we can help them?” Rose asked. 

“It depends on what they’re here for. I’m not going to just waltz up to them if there’s a risk they might consider me a target. Martha, where’s the closest staircase? We need to get down there and see what it is they want.”

“This way, follow me,” Martha said and darted through the doors ahead of them. The medical student wasn’t wearing the proper shoes for running, nor was she accustomed to the pace the two time travelers set, and they had to slow down to avoid overtaking her. When they reached the staircase, the Doctor took the lead, Rose just behind him, and Martha trailing along in their wake.

“Blimey, you two are fast,” she huffed. 

“Like I said, you get used to this sort of thing when you’re friends with him,” Rose said. From below came fresh screams of terror, which meant the Judoon must already be inside. 

“Go out that door there,” Martha instructed, referring to the door below them where screams were coming from. “There’s a balcony overlooking the first floor lobby.”

The Doctor pushed the door open and ducked down low as he crept out onto the mezzanine. The two women followed him, Martha easing the door shut, and took in the scene below from behind the cover of potted plants. The Judoon in their full armor, save for one with his mask off revealing an ugly rhino-like face, were moving from person to person, holding their heads and shining a blue light at their faces. Amidst the cries of fear and the beeping of the scanners, gruff voices proclaimed “human” over and over. 

The Doctor’s attention, however, was on a little stand in the corner. “Oh, look down there, Rose. They’ve got a little shop. I like a little shop. Remember the hospital on New Earth? They didn’t have a shop.”

“No,” Rose muttered. “Just mad scientist cat nuns and a bitchy trampoline.” 

“What are you two on about?” Martha looked at them like they’d sprouted extra heads. “Oh, never mind now. What are Judoon?”

“Galactic police. Well, police for hire,” the Doctor said, his tone displaying no fondness for them. “More like interplanetary thugs.”

“And they brought us to the moon?” 

“Neutral territory.” The Doctor explained. “According to galactic law, they've got no jurisdiction over the Earth, and they isolated us. That rain and lightning? That was them, using an H2O scoop.”

“What are you on about ‘galactic law’? And ‘New Earth’?” she asked. “Where’d you get that from?”

The Doctor didn’t answer. He stepped out from behind the plants, crouching down behind the glass under the railing to get a better look below. Rose followed him but kept her eyes on Martha. They’d have to tell her soon, she was already getting suspicious. She’d displayed a level head about aliens before now, but how would she react to finding out that one of the two people she’d allied herself with was an alien and both of them were time and space travellers?

“Human.” The Judoon continued their scans on the people below. “Human.”

“Human, human,” Rose muttered. “What else are they expecting to find in an Earth hospital?”

“Something…non-human,” the Doctor murmured, glancing at her. “They’re cataloguing everyone by species, so they’re after something that’s not human.”

“An alien?” Martha asked. “An alien here? What, disguised as a patient? Are you serious? Are you sure we’re not just…trespassing on the moon or something?”

The Doctor looked at her, impressed with the young woman’s reasoning the same way he had been with Rose’s so long ago in that elevator at Henrick’s. “No, but I like that. Good thinking. But no, like I said, this is neutral territory. They’re cataloging, and definitely after something non-human.” 

“So, we’ll just have to avoid them,” Rose said simply even though it probably wouldn’t be. There were hundreds of those things, and they’d be swarming the hospital soon if they weren’t already.

“Why?” Martha asked. He looked at her. Martha blinked. “Oh, you’re kidding me.” The Doctor arched one eyebrow and Rose felt a smile threatening to appear at the amused disbelief on the other woman’s face. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Rose licked her lips and pressed them together, trying not to laugh. She’d accepted it straight off, so had Donna. Briefly she wondered how the companions before her had reacted. How Sarah Jane had reacted. 

The smile faded from Martha’s face as she realized he wasn’t kidding. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“Come on then,” he said seriously, taking Rose by the hand. “I never did get a chance to look at those records earlier.”

Martha followed them up another few flights of stairs and through the halls. She had nowhere else to go and she was curious about everything, including them. They didn’t look alien or sound alien, they were speaking clear English and they sounded like Londoners. But the Judoon were speaking English, too, so that wasn’t worth anything. Whatever they were, they were close. They’d admitted her into the hospital under the guise of husband and wife and, looking at them earlier, it had been easy to believe. But Rose had said twice that they were friends, and nothing but the way the Doctor seemed to refuse to let go of her hand and the way they reacted and responded to each other, hinted at anything more. She would ask them later, she decided, if they survived. After all, when else was she going to have a chance to actually talk to a pair of nice aliens?

And dear God, did she hope they were nice and not just playing innocent. It’d be just her luck to end up bundled with them if they were the things those rhinos were after. 

The Doctor stopped outside an office and carefully opened the door, peering in. once he was sure the room was empty, he pushed the door open all the way. “I’m going to get to work. Martha, go back to the stairs and keep an eye on them. Rose, stand outside and make sure no one comes in here.”

Rose nodded. “Come on.”

Martha followed Rose out of the room. The blonde woman leaned against the wall by the door with the same air of confidence that the Doctor radiated, a kind that could only come from experience. Whatever was going on, it was nothing new to them. But for all Martha knew, aliens lived like this all the time, at odds with one another. There certainly seemed to be no shortage of them ready to take over her planet. 

Rose watched Martha carefully. The medical student seemed to be considering something and she wasn’t heading towards the stairs like she should be.

“Go on,” Rose said. “Whatever it is, you can ask. I was like you once.”

Martha swallowed. “Okay. Um…you’re…both…aliens?”

Rose shook her head immediately at the familiar question. “No. I’m human. That’s why I was in the hospital bed and not him.”

“He looks human, though, and sounds human,” she pointed out. “How do you know he’s really an alien?”

Rose arched her eyebrows, unimpressed. “You’re supposed to be watching the stairs. Shift.”

Martha frowned at her tone and something else that should’ve been obvious occurred to her. “You’re not even really sick, are you?”

Rose only smiled.


	4. Rhinos and Vampires

Light, rapid footsteps caught Rose’s attention and she saw Martha hurrying towards her. The black woman motioned towards the door. “Quick, inside!”  
  
Rose stepped backwards into the door, shoving it open with her shoulder, and turned around. The Doctor was at work examining a computer with the sonic screwdriver. She stepped over a fallen chair and leaned forward to peer over his shoulder. Windows flicked across the screen rapidly but from what she could tell there was nothing on them.   
  
Martha entered the room behind her. “They’ve reached the third floor,” she informed him. They didn’t have long, then. She noticed the screwdriver. “What’s that thing?”  
  
“Sonic screwdriver,” the Doctor said absently.  
  
“Well, if you’re not going to answer me properly.”   
  
He stopped scanning for a moment and turned. “No, really, it is. It’s a screwdriver, and it’s sonic.” He held it up for her to see. “Look.”   
  
The Doctor went back to scanning and Martha laughed. “What else have you got? A laser spanner?” she asked sarcastically.  
  
“I did,” he said matter-of-factly. “But it was stolen by Emily Pankhurst, cheeky woman.”  
  
Rose blinked. “Emily Pankhurst? When was this?”  
  
“Two regenerations ago. I helped chain her to 10 Downing Street.” He stopped scanning and whacked the screen. “Oh, this computer! The Judoon must have locked it down. Judoon platoon upon the moon.” He muttered to himself as rubbed his chin, his shoulders stiff with frustration. Rose put her hand on his shoulder and felt the muscles relax beneath her touch.   
  
“Why does it always have to be London?” he complained. “Cause we were just here for chips and to visit her friend, I swear, Martha. We weren’t looking for trouble, honestly–but that’s never helped us before, eh Rose?” He ran his hand through his hair agitatedly, mussing it up even more than it already was. “But I noticed these plasma coils around the hospital, and that lightning, that's plasma coils, they’ve been building up for two days now, so we checked in to check it out. I thought maybe there was something in here that shouldn’t be, something causing them. Turns out the plasma coils were the Judoon up above.”  
  
He leaned forward and began to type and Rose put her hand on his shoulder again. They’d barely started and he was already getting too close to the line he always toed in this body. The line he dared not cross but loved to test. He came closest to stepping over in matters regarding her, specifically her safety. Right now, she was as safe as anyone else in the hospital, trapped on the moon with a limited oxygen supply.   
  
“You said they were after an alien? But how could there be an alien here? Someone would’ve noticed, right?” Martha asked.   
  
“Not if it looks human and there are a lot of species that resemble your kind, Martha Jones.”  
  
She folded her arms. “Like you. Apparently.”  
  
“Like me. But not me.” He promised. “Not Rose, either. She’s human.”  
  
“But–and I’m not saying I believe you–but I don’t see why you’d be in danger. Don’t they have a photo?”   
  
“Might be a shape-changer.”  
  
“Whatever it is, can’t you just leave the Judoon to find it?”  
  
Rose took a step away from the Doctor, looking at the door. A single patient ran by, evidently in a panic, followed by a nurse. A fresh wave of terrified screaming from floors below reached their ears, probably a new group of humans being scanned by the Judoon. “She’s got a point, there, Doctor. Maybe we should go up to the roof and wait instead of mucking about down here.”  
  
He shook his head immeditaly. “If they can’t find who they’re looking for then they’ll declare the hospital guilty of harboring a fugitive and it’ll be sentenced to execution.”  
  
“All of us?” Martha’s eyes widened. “But we haven’t done anything!”  
  
“You don’t have the time to prove that and they probably would even listen–OH!” He exclaimed angrily, smacking the computer and pushing himself away, causing the two women to jump back in alarm. “Do you see? They’re thick! Judoon are thick! They are completely thick! They wiped the records! Oh, that's clever.” His hands went to his hair again.  
  
“Doctor, what are we looking for?” Rose asked.   
  
“I don’t know!” He said through his teeth. “Any patient admitted in the past week with unusual symptoms.”  
  
“Like severe abdominal pains?” Martha muttered but the Doctor didn’t seem to hear her, grabbing the computer screen and muttering something about a backup drive. “Just keep working. I’ll go ask Mr. Stoker, he might know.”   
  
The Doctor didn’t even acknowledge her. He turned the screen around, peering at the sides and the back. He picked up his sonic screwdriver and aimed it at the screen, tongue clamped between his teeth.   
  
Martha looked at Rose who nodded. “Hurry.”  
  
Not a minute after she left, the Doctor let out an excited shout. “Ha! Thick but not thick enough!” He jumped out of the chair. “Come on, we need to get up higher. I’m going to need a few minutes to sort through this stuff.”  
  
Rose nodded and the Doctor paused in his grim glee to examine her. He put his hands on either side of her face and asked softly, “Are you okay?”  
  
“’m fine,” she replied quietly.   
  
“Are you having any trouble breathing?”  
  
She shook her head.  
  
His eyes were pained but he managed to keep his voice level. “You will soon. All these terrified people and hundreds of Judoon, they’re eating up the air like piranhas. Do you remember how I told you to breathe with low air?”  
  
She nodded, covering his hand with one of her own.  
  
“Good.” He managed a genuine smile and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “The last thing we need is Jackie Tyler breaking the walls of reality to come after me because I let you die on the moon.”  
  
Rose half laughed at that and the Doctor took her hand, leading her out into the hall. They rounded the corner and the same time Martha burst through a door and careened into them. The Doctor let go of Rose to steady the medical student.   
  
“I’ve restored the backup,” he announced.  
  
Eyes wide with panic, she blurted, “I found her!”  
  
“You did what?”  
  
The door Martha emerged from was shoved forward, falling to the floor with a thud that made everyone nearby shriek, and a tall figure in black leather wearing what appeared to be a motorcycle helmet leaped through. Whatever it was, it was too thin to be a Judoon, but definitely not friendly.  
  
The Doctor’s eyes widened, “Run!” he grabbed their hands and took off down the hall with the leather man hard on their trail. They passed patients and doctors alike who leaped away to avoid getting hit or were simply huddled against the wall. He let go of their hands to push the door to the staircase open and they immediately bounded down, and Rose was wondering why they weren’t going up and  _away_  from the Judoon when, lo and behind, the humanoid rhinos appeared beneath them, marching up the staircase to the fourth floor.   
  
The Doctor swiveled around, grabbing the women to steady them, then pushed them towards the exit.  
  
They ran down an empty staff corridor lined with carts and cleaning supplies here and there along the walls. Panels were crooked in the ceiling, or missing altogether, and wires hung from the holes left behind, a result of the violent tremors from the H2O scoop.   
  
A quick glance over her shoulder showed the Leather Man pursuing them determinedly. “What did you do to this guy, Martha?” Rose gasped.  
  
The medical student let out a breathy whimper, struggling just to keep up with them.   
  
They ran along the corridors with the Doctor seemingly picking turns at random, which resulted in a lot of skidding and pushing off the walls and banged elbows. The Doctor stopped abruptly, catching Rose and shoving her down a side hall. Martha was just far enough behind that he managed to push her as well and then he bolted after them. Their momentary pause had reduced the Leather Man’s distance by several feet, and he was practically on top of them when the Doctor opened a door, jostled both women in and following before slamming it shut in Leather Man’s face, locking the door with his screwdriver. That wouldn’t hold him for long.   
  
They were in an x-ray room with someone’s scans still hanging on the boards, a testament to how normal things had been just an hour ago. The Doctor grabbed them both, yet again, and pushed them into the control room. “When I say ‘now’, press the button, Martha!”  
  
Martha’s hands flailed around uselessly. “But I don’t know which one!”  
  
“How do you not know?” Rose cried. “You’re a doctor!”  
  
“Yeah, but I’m not a radiologist!”   
  
“Well you better start learning!” The Doctor barked and withdrew from the room, heading for the machinery.   
  
Martha stared down at the controls in dismay and Rose looked around the room for something that would give them any clue on what to do. Did they expect the employees to just have this memorized? “Aren’t there any instructions? A how-to or something?!”   
  
The Leather Man started to ram against the door.  
  
“Oh, yes!” Martha grabbed a book from the counter labeled  _Operator’s Manual._ She wrenched it open, flitting through the pages desperately for something,  _anything_ that’d give her a clue how to work the damned machine, and wishing she’d opted to take a radiology course in med school, and vowing that she would find a way to if she survived this. Rose stood in front of the control panel with her hands ready to act.  
  
Then the door gave way under the assault, crashing to the floor and Martha gasped. The Doctor had the X-ray machine pointed like a gun at the doorway and the fast-approaching Leather Man.  
  
“Which button?” Rose screeched as the Doctor shouted, “NOW!”   
  
Martha shook her head, sending up a silent prayer that this would work, and pointed to the big yellow button that was higher than the others. Rose slammed her hand down on it and they both flinched away, squeezing their eyes shut against the near-blinding white light, not unlike the light of the H20 scoop. An odd buzzing sound filled the air that reminded Rose of the sonic screwdriver as massive amounts of radiation exploded into the air. She could almost feel it in her bones, the  _power_  being released onto the poor bastard that had pursued them. And then it was over and the light and sound and sensations disappeared like they’d never been there, save for a residual tingle in the air. The Leather Man fell face forward to the floor and for a moment the room was silent except for the tiny jingle of his zipper. Breathing heavily, Rose gripped the control panel for support. The Doctor let go of his impromptu weapon and took a step towards the body on the floor.  
  
“What did you do?” Martha asked.   
  
“Increased the radiation by five thousand percent.” The Doctor explained. “Killed him dead.”   
  
“Nice,” Rose remarked under her breath, looking at the thing on the floor. Whatever it was it must’ve been bad if the Doctor–the man who believed everyone deserved an opportunity to cease and desist, the man who preferred to fight with wits and words–chose to kill it without even giving it a chance.  
  
“But isn’t that gonna kill you?” Martha asked, setting the manual down.   
  
“Nah, it’s only roentgen radiation. We used to play with roentgen bricks in the nursery.”   
  
Rose snorted with laughter and Martha looked at her like she was crazy. The Doctor frowned, twitching oddly. “What?”  
  
“I’m sorry…but I can just picture a mini-you with…big ol’ ears and a diaper playin with glowin’ green blocks,” she chortled.  
  
“Oi, I’ll have you know, I did not have big ears when I was a baby. And diapers are only for  _very_  young infants. Unlike you apes, we learn how to control our basic bodily functions fairly quickly.”  
  
Rose continued to laugh, giddy with the relief that came from the adrenaline rush during the chase combined with her adorable mental pictures. The Doctor gave her a smug look, still twitching oddly, and said, “I seem to recall you playing with some odd things when you were a baby.”  
  
Rose frowned indigently. “Hey, when did you go lookin’ at me when I was a baby?”  
  
“It was Jack’s idea,” he explained sheepishly.  
  
“Hey!” Martha shouted. “Would you two stop it for a moment and focus? What’s wrong with you?” she asked the Doctor. “Why are you…” she made a face and gestured at him with her hands, “…twitching?”  
  
“I absorbed all the radiation,” he explained. “It’s safe for you to come out…I just need to…ah, ah…expel it.”  
  
He bounced on his toes, hopping from foot to foot, shaking his limbs. Both women cautiously exited the control room. Rose tried to get closer to him, only to be stopped by Martha who shook her head. She wasn’t a specialist, but she knew enough about the radiation currently in the Doctor’s body to know it wasn’t something Rose should be exposed to on that scale.  
  
“If I concentrate I can shake the radiation out of my body and into one spot.” He shook his head, looking down at his left foot and held it aloft, hopping up and down on his right foot. “It's in my left shoe. Here we go, here we go, easy does it...” He kicked his foot. “Out, out! Ow! Ow! Ow!”  
  
Martha stared at him completely nonplussed and Rose’s shoulders were shaking with barely constrained laughter.   
  
“Ah, ah, ah, ah! Itches, itches, itches, itches, oh! Ah, hold on!” He grabbed his shoe and pulled it off, sock and all. Lifting the lid of a yellow bin, he tossed them both inside and slammed it shut.   
  
“Done.” He announced.   
  
“You’re completely mad,” Martha realized. Rose sputtered out a laugh.   
  
“You’re right,” he said seriously. “I look daft in one shoe.” He leaned down, plucked the other sock and shoe off and chucked them in the bin with their counterparts. Martha gawked at him. “Barefoot on the moon.” His teeth clicked together.   
  
That was all Rose could take. She roared with laughter, leaning against the wall for support as her body shook with the force of it and her legs felt like they’d give out. The Doctor chuckled right along with her, grinning broadly, and Martha shook her head.  
  
“Mad. Completely mad. Both of you!”   
  
That just made them laugh even more and Martha sighed, looking down at the dead Leather Man. She waited until their laughter had subsided before bothering to speak.   
  
“If you two are quite done, do you want to explain to me what the hell that thing is and where it’s from? The planet Zovirax?” She crouched down next to the corpse to examine it.  
  
“It’s just a Slab,” the Doctor said, crouching opposite of her. “They’re called Slabs. Basic slave drones.”  
  
“Basic slave drones? Sound a bit familiar, Doctor?” Rose asked tightly.  
  
He glanced up. “Not like the Ood.” He assured her. “It wasn’t alive, not really. Look, solid leather all the way through. Someone has got one hell of a fetish.”  
  
“Like someone else I know.” Rose teased.  
  
The Doctor huffed and went to retrieve his screwdriver. “Different me.”   
  
“It was that woman, Miss Finnegan.” Martha said. “It was working for her just like a servant.”  
  
“Sounds an awful lot like an Ood,” Rose commented.   
  
There was a hiss as the Doctor removed his sonic screwdriver that, sadly, appeared to not have made it through the increase of radiation unscathed. “My sonic screwdriver!” he exclaimed quietly.  
  
Unaware of the significance, Martha continued right on, “She was one of the patients, but–”  
  
“My sonic screwdriver!” he repeated. Rose peered at it and frowned. It wasn’t just damaged; it was fried.   
  
“–she had a straw like some kind of vampire!”  
  
“I loved my sonic screwdriver! Rose, look at–”  
  
“Doctor!”  
  
“Sorry!” He apologized, tossing his beloved screwdriver over his shoulder like yesterday’s garbage. It hit the wall and clattered against the floor and Rose rolled her eyes. The Doctor grinned. “You called me ‘Doctor.’”  
  
“Anyway.” Martha said pointedly. “Miss Finnegan is the alien. She was drinking Mr. Stoker’s blood.”  
  
“Poor bloke.” Rose muttered.   
  
“Funny time to take a snack. You’d think she’d be hiding.” He mused, then his eyes widened. “Unless–no. …Yes, that’s it! Wait a minute… YES! Shape-changer! Internal shape-changer!” To Rose he said, “Remember that plasmavore on Srensto? The little boy who tried to drink you blood with that curly straw?”  
  
Rose made a face and shuddered. “Oh God, don’t remind me. I still can’t even look at those things…”  
  
“Miss Finnegan must be a plasmavore. She wasn’t drinking the blood. She was  _assimilating_  it! If she can assimilate Mr. Stoker’s blood, mimic the biology, she’ll register as human.”  
  
“And if she does that–”   
  
“Then I’ll be the only thing in this hospital that doesn’t register as human and unless they know they’re after a female, they’ll assume it was me. We’ve got to find her and show the Judoon. Come on!”   
  
They ran from the room but the Doctor froze almost immediately. Unprepared, Rose crashed into him and Martha just managed to avoid causing a dog pile. “Doctor?” Rose gasped.  
  
“Ah, tchhh, shh, shh!” He held up his hand, listening inteltly to something they couldn’t hear. “Down!” He hissed, pulling them against the wall, and crouched down in a doorway behind a water dispenser.   
  
“What is it?” Martha whispered.  
  
“Shh!” He hissed fiercely, his teeth bared in a snarl. Rose put her hand on his cheek and gazed at him, begging him with her eyes to calm down.   
  
A door opened down the hall and closed. The trio waited, holding their breath, as the sound of footsteps and leather moving against leather came closer to them. An identical duplicate of the body they’d left in the room walked by. It didn’t pause or even glance their way, continuing on down the hall. Martha’s breathing was shaky when she inhaled again.  
  
“That’s the thing about Slabs,” the Doctor explained quietly once it was out of earshot. “The always travel in pairs.”   
  
“What about you two?” Martha asked.  
  
The Doctor frowned. “What about us?”  
  
“Do you two always travel together like this? Just each other’s backup for this go-round, full-time partners, or are you more than that?”   
  
“We’re friends,” Rose said, “and yeah, we do travel with each other full-time.”  
  
“Humans,” the Doctor scoffed. “We’re stuck on the moon, running out of air, with Judoon and a bloodsucking criminal, you’re asking personal questions. Come on.”  
  
He stepped out, keeping low and watching the way the Slab had gone in case it came back.  
  
“I like that,” Martha muttered. “‘Humans.’ I’m still not convinced you’re an alien.”  
  
So focused on watching for the Slab, the Doctor didn’t notice that he’d stepped out in front of a troop of Judoon until he turned and found the blue light of a scanner shining in his eyes.   
  
“Nonhuman,” the masked rhino declared and Rose swore softly.  
  
“Oh my God, you really are!” Martha murmured.   
  
“And again!” The Doctor grabbed Rose’s hand and the three of them booked it.   
  
Behind them, the Judoon drew their guns and they whined as they powered up. There was a distinct noise as they fired and the three of them barely ducked in time to avoid getting vaporized. Martha shrieked once. Wrenching the door open, they darted into the stairway and headed up this time. Rose found she had to agree with the Doctor’s view on hospitals: the only thing good about them were the shops. She was beginning to feel the shortage of oxygen, too. It was harder and harder to get a good lungful of air. They were running out of time.   
  
They went back onto the seventh floor and Rose took point, leading them around corners and through doorways while the Doctor remained in the back, locking doors behind them the old fashioned way. It wasn’t much, but it’d slow any Judoon after them for a few moments. They emerged into a corridor, walking briskly past people who were slumping to the floor, trying to breathe in the thinning air. Some were lucky enough to have oxygen masks strapped to their face, but those tanks were like Titanic lifeboats. They could save them for a time, wouldn’t last long if they weren’t rescued.  
  
“They've done this floor. Come on. The Judoon are logical and just a little bit thick.” the Doctor explained. “They won't go back to check a floor they've checked already. If we're lucky.”  
  
Martha noticed her friend kneeling by a patient with an oxygen mask and she stopped, kneeling beside her. Julia gave her a look of despair, but she was calmer now, having accepted their location and what had to be done.   
  
“Doctor, I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re usually not lucky.” Rose pointed out tersely, then realized Martha was no longer with them and paused. “Hold on, wait.”  
  
The Doctor turned around. “What?”   
  
She pointed to Martha and Julia, the latter was rubbing the arm of a black woman in a sky blue robe who had an oxygen mask on her face.  
  
“How much oxygen is there?” Martha asked.  
  
“Not enough for all these people,” Julia replied quietly. “We’re gonna run out.”  
  
“How are you feeling?” the Doctor asked Martha. “Are you alright?”  
  
“I’m running on adrenaline.”  
  
“Welcome to our world,” he muttered then looked at Rose. “And you?”  
  
“Been better,” she said, taking deliberate, slow breaths. “Been worse.”  
  
“Rose.”  
  
“I’ll be fine, Doctor. Let’s just not run anymore marathons, yeah?” She said seriously. “But what about the Judoon?”  
  
“Ah, great big lung reserves. It won’t slow them down. Where’s Mr. Stokers office?”  
  
“Just down here,” Martha pushed herself to her feet and walked past them. The Doctor followed.  
  
Rose hung back for a moment. Julia’s eyes were resigned and sad as if she’d already accepted her fate. “We’re all going to die, aren’t we?” Julia asked calmly.   
  
“No,” Rose shook her head. “We’re gonna make it, I promise you.”  
  
Julia shook her head as well. “Don’t.”  
  
Rose knelt down beside Julia and the patient who was now looking at Rose as well. “Listen to me.” Rose ordered. “Do you remember the aliens at Christmas? The Cybermen? And the ship hittin’ Big Ben? Everyone thought the world was gonna end, right? Well, it didn’t. You know why? ‘Cause we stopped it, me ‘n him. We stopped that then, and we’re gonna stop this now. I’m not mad, I swear. Just keep up what you’re doin. Alright? Be a doctor.” She gave both women a reassuring smile then followed after the Doctor.  
  
Just down the hall were the double doors the Slab had come bursting out of and she could hear the Doctor talking from within. She carefully stepped over the fallen door into a large office with pictures of human anatomy and Mr. Stoker’s credentials in frames. Mr. Stoker himself was on the floor, dead, his skin a gross shade of gray. Rose made a face.   
  
“–right. She is a plasmavore.”   
  
“What’s she doing on Earth?” Martha asked.  
  
“Hiding, on the run. Like Ronald Biggs in  _Rio de Janeiro_.” He frowned. “What’s she doing now? She’s still not safe. …The Judoon could execute us all. Come on.” He rose and headed for the door, grabbing Rose’s hand as he passed.  
  
“Wait,” Martha said suddenly. She walked over and knelt respectfully beside her former instructor, sliding his eyelids shut with her fingers. Rose and the Doctor looked on solemnly. Martha stood up and exhaled, nodding.   
  
The Doctor pulled Rose out into the hallway. “Think, think, think!” he said to himself. “If I was a wanted plasmavore surrounded by police, what would I do?” He looked up and froze, his muscles tense. Rose followed his gaze to a red sign with white letters that read ‘MRI’ with an arrow pointing left.  
  
“Aaah… she’s as clever as me. Almost.”   
  
“What do you–” Rose started to ask, but a door down the hall banged open and people screamed. Heavy footsteps and a gruff voice echoed loudly over the human cries, “Find the nonhuman. Execute.”  
  
The Doctor put his hands on Rose’s shoulders. “Rose, stay here with Martha. I need time. You’ve got to hold them up.”  
  
“No,” she shook her head. “No, she can hold them up. I’m not leavin’ you.”  
  
“Rose,” he said seriously. “Trust me. I need you to stay here. I’ve got a plan, but if you’re there, it might not work. Rose, please.”  
  
Rose gritted her teeth and glared at him. He stared back and for once it seemed he would not be swayed and they didn’t have time for arguing. The Judoon could reach them any second. So she exhaled angrily through her teeth to let him know her displeasure and nodded.  
  
“What do I do?” she asked.  
  
“Stall.” He said, cupping her face in his hands. “Then lead them to the MRI room.”  
  
“Okay,” Rose nodded. “How should I–?”   
  
He leaned forward and kissed her full on the mouth, his hands tightening on her face, then he broke away and ran down the hall away from the Judoon without looking back. Rose swallowed, her lips trembling as she sucked in a breath. It wasn’t the first time he’d kissed her but was definitely chaste compared to some of the kisses they’d shared.   
  
“Just friends, eh?” Martha muttered.  
  
Rose swallowed. “Best mates.” She looked down at the ground and noticed, for the first time, an oxygen tank lying empty near the wall. Someone had scrawled the words  _Bad Wolf_  with a black marker onto the metal container. After all this time, Bad Wolf was still looking out for their Doctor.  
  
Martha followed her gaze to the random words on the tank, probably written by some delirious or terrified patient. But the sight of those two words seemed to stir something in Rose. Her mouth tightened, her eyes narrowed, she squared her shoulders and when she spoke it was with an authority she didn’t have before. “Come on. We’ll head them off.”  
  
They retreated to the hallway where Julia was and stood between the oncoming Judoon and the Doctor. Martha’s breathing was shallow and she was trembling, a sharp contrast to Rose, who was standing eerily still, her shoulders squared, and her chin lifted.  
  
“Find the nonhuman. Execute!” The unmasked Judoon roared.   
  
“Judoon!” Rose shouted. “Judoon! Listen to me! We know who you’re lookin’ for! She’s here, in the hospital.”  
  
The Judoon stopped in front of them, but Martha couldn’t tell if they were going to listen or sweep them out of the way.   
  
“She’s this woman, she calls herself Florence.” Martha explained, her voice surprisingly level. The Judoon Chief pulled out his scanner and shined it in Martha’s face.   
  
“Human.” He declared and grabbed Martha’s hand, marking it with a thick black X, before he turned the scanner on Rose. This time it beeped out a slightly different report. “Human. Wait. Nonhuman trace suspected.”  
  
Behind him, the masked Judoon drew their guns and pointed at Rose. “Nonhuman element confirmed. Authorize full scan.”  
  
“Listen to me–” Rose’s gaze hardened and she started to lift her arm, but the Judoon caught it, twisted it, and she inhaled loudly, her face contorting in pain as he backed her against the wall.   
  
“Rose!” Martha shouted.  
  
“Keep back.” Her gaze was hard, despite the moisture in her eyes, and she stared down the monstrous alien.  
  
“What are you? What are you?” the Judoon demanded.  
  
“That’s the question, ain’t it?” She asked through her clenched teeth without a trace of fear. Martha stared at the blonde woman like she’d never seen her before. There was something in Rose’s eyes, something dark and ancient and feral and Martha found herself wondering exactly how human Rose was.   
  
Julia put her hand on Martha’s arm and she turned to her friend. “What did it mean, ‘nonhuman element?’ Is she an alien?”  
  
“I don’t think so, but…” But what human could stare down a Judoon like that especially when in that much pain? “I don’t know. I just don’t know anymore.”  
  
The Judoon stepped back, releasing Rose, and she brought her injured arm to her chest protectively. He grabbed her other hand and marked it with an X, declaring, “Human. Traces of recent facial contact with nonhuman and older contact with multiple nonhuman species on multiple areas of the body.”  
  
“I could’ve told you that,” Rose muttered.   
  
“Continue the search,” he ordered the troops, then handed Rose a thin piece of white plastic. “You will need this.”  
  
“What’s that for?”  
  
“Compensation.”  
  
Rose peered at it with interest, like she was actually able to understand the strange writing on it. “Blimey, is this for standard credit?” She muttered, pocketing the white piece of plastic, and followed after the Judoon.  
  
Martha and Julia stared, dumbfounded, but Martha recovered first. “Keep on, Julia.”   
  
“But…” Julia stared after her friend, but made no move to follow her, Rose, or the Judoon. Whatever had happened to Martha in the last hour, Julia wanted no part of it.  
  
Martha hurried to catch up with Rose who was insisting that she knew what they were after. “You said it yourself! Multiple nonhuman traces! I know what I’m talkin’ about!” She turned to Martha and said under her breath, “Thickheads. I think they broke my wrist.”  
  
“Human. Where is the nonhuman?” the Judoon Chief demanded.  
  
She pointed at the sign that said MRI. “Follow the signs.”  
  
The Judoon took off quickly and Martha and Rose were barely able to keep up. Rose’s wrist was already darkening with bruises and Martha could hear her hiss softly in pain as it was jostled around. They were trailing behind when the Judoon reached the room and arrived in time to hear the Chief, whose scanner pointing at a familiar man on the floor, say, “Confirm–deceased.”  
  
Rose froze, completely and utterly, and then she let out shriek that wasn’t human and threw herself forward, only to be restrained by one of the Judoon. “NO! Doctor! _Doctor!_ ” she screeched.  
  
“Case closed.”  
  
“Let go! GET OFF ME!” She shouted, looking up at the woman with a feral look, an odd gleam of yellow in her eyes. “It wasn’t him! It was her! She killed him!”  
  
“She did,” Martha added, trying to get past. “She murdered him like she murdered Mr. Stoker!”  
  
“Judoon have no authority over human crime,” the Chief responded.   
  
“She’s not human!” Rose spat at the plasmavore.   
  
“Oh, but I am. I’ve been catalogued.” Florence Finnegan said, holding up the back of her hand, showing the thick X inked onto her skin.   
  
“But she’s not!” Martha protested. “She assimi–” she stopped mid-sentence, eyes widening as she realized what the Doctor had done. “Wait a minute. You drank his blood–the Doctor’s blood?”  
  
Rose made a noise of rage and struggled again to get at the plasmavore, but the Judoon held firm. Martha grabbed a scanner off one of the Judoon and shined it at Finnegan.  
  
“Oh, I don’t mind!” The woman tittered. “Scan all you like.”  
  
The scanner beeped its result. “Nonhuman,” the Chief declared.   
  
The woman’s amusement vanished. “What?”  
  
“Confirm analysis.”   
  
A half dozen scanners were pointed at the plasmavore and Rose’s face twisted into a vicious smile, finally understanding the Doctor’s idiotic plan.   
  
“Oh, but it’s a mistake, surely!” she tittered nervously. “I’m human. I’m as human as they come.”   
  
“He gave his life so they’d find you.” Martha, for her part, was amazed. The Doctor didn’t know any of these people and yet he’d died for them, like some sort of scrawny super hero.  
  
“And if they don’t kill you, I will.” Rose vowed. Martha's eyes widened and she looked at her. That hadn't sounded like Rose, not the Rose she knew. There'd been a faint echo to her voice, almost like someone else starting to speak with her. More frightening were her eyes, definitely more golden than brown, and murderous. The only thing keeping that vampire-alien alive right now was, ironically, a Judoon.  
  
“Confirm–plasmavore.” The Judoon declared and all traces of humanity vanished from the woman’s face. “Charged with murdering the child princess of Padrivole Regency Nine.”  
  
“Well, she deserved it.” The plasmavore growled. “Those pink cheeks and those blonde curls and that simpering voice. She was begging for the bite of a plasmavore.”  
  
“Do you confess?”  
  
“Confess? I’m proud of it!” She shouted and retreated behind her bodyguard “Slab–stop them!”   
  
The drone moved to do just that, but before he could do more than take a few steps towards them, a Judoon fired his gun and a red beam of light shot into the Slab. It turned red, disintegrating into the air. Finnegan was already at work, messing the wires in the control room and Rose and Martha noticed the machine for the first time, fizzing and crackling with power.  
  
“Verdict–guilty,” the Chief said. “Sentence–execution.”  
  
With a savage grin, she shoved two chords together and an alarm began to blare, the words ‘magnetic overload’ flashing in red on a sign.   
  
“Down!” Martha gasped, pulling Rose to the floor as the Judoon drew their guns. The plasmavore was shouting at the Judoon but her words made no sense to Rose as she struggled forward on her elbows and knees, ignoring the pain in her broken wrist, to reach the Doctor.  
  
“Doctor,” she whispered, touching his cold cheek. The Judoon fired and she felt the heat from the beams but she didn’t look up. The plasmavore died with a shriek. Martha crawled over to Rose and the Doctor.   
  
“Case closed.” the Chief announced.   
  
“What did she mean, ‘burn with me?’” Martha asked then pointed at the buzzing machine. “The scanner shouldn't be doing that. She's done something.”  
  
The chief drew his scanner and approached the fizzing machine. It beeped warningly. “Scans detect lethal acceleration of monomagnetic pulse.”   
  
“Well, do something! Stop it!”  
  
The Judoon stepped away from the machine. “Our jurisdiction has ended. Judoon will evacuate.”  
  
“You can’t just leave it! What’s it going to do?”  
  
“All units withdraw!” The Chief ordered into a com device and they did just that, filing out in an orderly fashion, the same way they’d come.   
  
Martha chased after them into the hall. “You can't go! That thing's going to explode and it's  _all your fault_!” she screamed.  
  
The Judoon continued their march and, defeated, Martha reentered the room with the ticking time bomb, the dead alien, and the distraught supposed-human. Rose was still kneeling next to him with her hands on his chest, her mouth moving soundlessly. As she got closer, Martha realized she was speaking softly to the Doctor.  
  
“…and you promised me we’d go back to Barcelona and see the dogs with no noses. Remember? I...I was gonna try an’ talk you into lettin’ me keep one this time. A proper pet, not a daft bloke who nearly gets us killed. And we were gonna go back an’ find Jack after he’s had time to rebuild everythin’ and we could be all together again. And…and…” her voice broke and she let out a sob, slapping his chest with the hand that wasn’t injured. “Come on, regenerate!  _Please_ , Doctor, I love you… You promised…”   
  
He’s pale…but not as pale as Mr. Stoker was! Martha realized. There might still be a chance. “Rose,” she knelt next to the Doctor, across from her. “Look, he’s not like Mr. Stoker. I think he’s still got blood in him. Maybe it’s not too late. Has he got normal lungs and stuff?” Rose nodded.  
  
Martha didn’t waste any time, pinching his nose with one hand and opening his mouth with the other, and breathed into him. She started compressions on his left heart, counting out five, then she breathed into his mouth again. She started compressing his left heart once more and Rose realized that they’d never mentioned that one little difference between Time Lord and human anatomy.  
  
“Martha, you’re not doin’ it right.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“He’s got two hearts.”  
  
Martha gawked, her breathing labored, and stopped compressing. “Two hearts? How can he–”  
  
She was wasting precious time and air asking stupid questions!   
  
Rose shoved her hands out of the way and did the compressions herself, ignoring the excruciating pain racing up her right arm. It wouldn’t matter that her arm was broken if the Doctor didn’t come back. Her life wouldn’t be worth living. Not that she had long to live with the magnetic machine going apeshit behind her. Fresh tears filled her eyes and she blinked them away, drawing in a big breath of air, and blew into his mouth.   
  
The Doctor inhaled sharply. His eyes flew open and he coughed, gasping for air, sucking the precious life force from around them. He lifted his head, gazing at Rose, and she smiled at him through her tears. The pain combined with lack of oxygen was too much and her limbs gave way, collapsing to the floor next to him.   
  
“Doctor,” she breathed.   
  
“The scanner.” Martha choked out, slumping to the floor as well. “She did…something.”  
  
Coughing and gasping, the Doctor looked at the MRI. Martha’s eyes drifted shut as she lost consciousness. Blackness swam at the edge of Rose’s vision and she knew she wouldn’t be far behind. She thought she might have said, “Hurry,” but she wasn’t sure if she even had the oxygen left for that. The Doctor touched her briefly then crawled for the control room, coughing and gasping the whole way.   
  
Rose’s head swam and the world around her blurred as she lost consciousness, fading into soft, golden light…


	5. The New Companion

Someone was singing. A woman, she thought. She knew this song. It was in her dreams. It reminded her of time and power and intense love that made her want to fight and kill and die to preserve it. A song that made her think of a pack of wolves running through the night with stars in their fur. A song that reminded her of her family: a blonde woman who actually had dark hair and a ginger man with tears in his eyes; a young man with dark skin and a handsome man with a charming smile; a man with two faces, one with big ears and blue eyes, and the other with big hair and brown eyes. This was the one she loved the most.   
  
The singing voice slowly deepened from feminine to masculine, garbled and wordless, but just as familiar and made her feel calm, safe, and loved. “Ro…Ro…se…Rose…Rose? Rose!”   
  
She opened her eyes and stared at the unidentifiable mass above her. Her vision was hazy and unfocused. She blinked several times and a pair of concerned brown eyes came into focus.   
  
“Doctor?” she mumbled.  
  
The Doctor ducked his head to press his lips against her forehead. “You’re alright,” he whispered, relief coloring his tone. “You’re alright. Oh, thank Rassilon.”   
  
She smiled, reaching up with her unbroken arm to touch his cheek and her vision was blurred again, this time with tears. “You were dead…you’d…I thought you’d left me.”  
  
The Doctor exhaled and cradled her to his chest protectively. “I’m sorry. It was the only thing I could think of. If we’d had more time I could’ve come up with something else, I’m sure, but–”  
  
“And if I’d been there…”   
  
“She might’ve gone for you instead or just simply killed you.” His grip on her tightened at the thought. She hissed in pain as her wrist was shifted and he drew back. “What is it?”  
  
She lifted her wrist gingerly, showing him the bruised skin. “That Judoon Chief. I think he might’ve broken it when he grabbed me.”   
  
The Doctor’s eyes darkened with anger. He looked ready to chase after the Judoon ships and rain down hell upon them–and he probably would have if she didn’t need medical attention. He stood up, still holding her and she smiled weakly. “It’s my arm, Doctor, not my legs. I can walk.”   
  
A muscle in his jaw twitched and he reluctantly set her on her feet. She swayed a bit but stayed upright, inhaling and exhaling deeply.   
  
“We’ve got air,” she observed.  
  
“Yup. While you were out they popped us back to Earth.”   
  
Rose’s eyes widened. “Martha?”  
  
“She’s fine,” he assured her. “She was unconscious, I took her out into the ward then I came back for you. She’ll be all right; the emergency crews are here sorting it all out. And UNIT will probably be here soon if they’re not already, so we should probably get moving before they find us or we’ll never get out of here and I need to get a look at that.” He nodded to her wrist, then as an afterthought, he reached up and pulled his tie off, wrapping it around her arm as a makeshift splint.  
  
They took the elevator so her arm wouldn’t be jolted around too much and Rose protested about Martha the entire way down.   
  
“It’s been a while since we had someone else onboard,” she reminded him. “And not that I don’t mind it bein’ just the two of us, but don’t you think she deserves to at least  _know_? We don’t have to make her a permanent resident, but she saved your life, Doctor. I thought it was too late for CPR, I was just hopin’ you’d regenerate…but she tried anyway.”  
  
He raised his eyebrows. “But that was you at the end.”  
  
“Didn’t believe me when I said you had two hearts. But it was her idea, yeah.”  
  
“Well, then, I suppose we do owe her at least a round trip.” He decided after a moment. “If she wants to come.”  
  
Rose grinned. They walked with practiced confidence past the emergency crews examining people and no one bothered them. There were more people outside the hospital and what appeared to be every ambulance this side of the Thames. The police were there and it looked like the military was starting to turn up as well. The TARDIS was where they’d parked her across from the hospital, unnoticed and undisturbed, waiting anxiously for them.  
  
Rose looked back at the hospital and movement near one of the ambulances caught her eye. Two black women were standing there, one of them speaking frantically to the other, who was wearing the white coat of a doctor. It was Martha and she was looking over the woman’s shoulder at them. Rose smiled and the Doctor waved his free hand at her.  
  
The Doctor opened up the door to the TARDIS and ushered Rose in quickly, shutting the door behind them, and ran towards the console. The TARDIS hummed welcomingly and Rose felt her relief at having them back safe and sound. Rose stroked the closest coral branch and smiled. The Doctor danced around the console and the rotor pumped up and down and they left London behind.   
  
“Alright, Miss Tyler, to the infirmary with you!”  
  
A few minutes later they’d located the infirmary deep within the TARDIS, a lot further than it normally was, as if she wanted to keep them safe deep within. Rose recalled the fear she’d felt from the TARDIS before the scoop had taken them, and knew the TARDIS must have felt it when the Doctor had died, and wasn’t bothered in the slightest by their ship’s protectiveness. The Doctor scanned her arm with one of the machines, muttering to himself about making another sonic screwdriver. Her wrist was broken, but it wasn’t the first time and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. He gave her something to dull the pain as he set the bone, and gave her an injection to speed the healing process.  
  
“I’ll give it another boost once I get a new screwdriver up and running. In the mean time you’re wearing a brace.” He opened a drawer and pulled out one of the bright pink braces Rose wore whenever she injured her arm. He rolled his eyes at it but his expression was fond as he fastened it around her arm.   
  
Rose held it up for examination and smiled at fond memories of visiting different times and planets while wearing it. The surface of that brace and its twin were covered in scrawling text from people who’d signed them. Some of the signatures weren’t even in English, written by many different hands, claws, paws, and other various prehensile extremities from across time and space. Her favorite was a tiny, messy name near her thumb written by a little elflike girl named Lilah who’d been fascinated the color of her cast, not found anywhere on her planet, and the story of why Rose needed it to begin with.  
  
 _We should go back_ , Rose thought.  _Lilah would love to hear this one._ Now if only she could convince the Doctor. He seemed to have something against going back to places once he’d been there that century, with the exception of 21st century Earth. Though that probably had something to do with the threat of multiple Tyler slaps hanging over his head if he kept her away from home and her mum. She didn’t suppose that would be an issue anymore, unless, of course, they took on another passenger from that era.  
  
“So. Martha?” Rose tilted her head.   
  
“I suppose so,” he nodded, straightening up the counter and putting everything back into its place. “But the minute she gets a door to her brain in her forehead, she’s goin’ right back home.”  
  
“Deal,” she agreed.  
  
“But, we’ll have to wait until tomorrow. I need to get a screwdriver up and working before we head anywhere.”  
  
“Alright, then, I’m gonna shower and go to bed. You go make a new screwdriver and when you’re done with that, get some sleep. You nearly died today. That’s not somethin’ you can just bounce back from.”   
  
Rose slid off the bed and set off in search of her room. The TARDIS had rearranged things in their absence so there was no telling where it’d gotten to.   
  
The next morning, Rose stood in the console room wearing a purple tank top under her favorite denim jacket and a pair of jeans with a fresh coat of makeup applied. She felt like herself again, all the appropriate layers in place. In her hands she held two steaming cups of tea. The Doctor was fiddling around a panel on the console. She couldn’t tell if he’d slept at all, but he was wearing his old brown pinstriped suit, so that was something.  
  
“Good morning. Fancy a cuppa?” She asked, holding out the mug.   
  
He smiled and took it from her. “Thanks. I was about to come ask if you wanted one.”  
  
Rose grinned, her tongue poking out, and she sat down in the chair. “So, how’s it comin’?”   
  
“Almost done,” he said, taking a sip of the tea as he sat beside her. “Just getting the settings reprogrammed and trying to convince the TARDIS to land us later that evening. She’s convinced that 2008 is a bad year. Apparently some interesting things happen, besides the hospital getting taken to the moon.”  
  
“Ooh…do you think we should check it out?” Rose asked.  
  
In response, the rotor made an angry sound and the ever-present hum of the TARDIS seemed to deepen, the lights flickering ominously.  
  
“Okay, okay,” she said. “We’ll behave, promise. But we just want to go back for Martha. She  _did_  save the Doctor, after all. He’d be dead without her and so would I.”   
  
The angry vibe in the air diminished and the hum lightened happily. The Doctor put his arm around Rose’s shoulders and she leaned into him.   
  
“That’s the spirit,” he said cheerfully then asked Rose, “How’d you sleep?”  
  
“Good. Surprisingly good, actually, considering.” She frowned at him. “What about you or did you even sleep?”  
  
“I was in there with you for about five hours,” he assured her. “I was careful not to wake you. No nightmares?”  
  
“No nightmares.” Rose confirmed with a satisfied nod. “I was too tired for nightmares.”  
  
Something on the console dinged and a small, narrow cylinder popped out of a hole she hadn’t noticed before. He stood up with an “Ah!” of triumph. Downing the rest of his tea in a few gulps, he handed the mug to Rose, and pressed a few more buttons on the panel, then pulled the new screwdriver out. He held it up for examination. “Look at you,” he crooned. “Nice and shiny, all the old settings with a few new ones. Hold on, let me see–Rose, present arms!”   
  
Rose held up her wounded arm. He shined the sonic on it and the new screwdriver emitted the same sound as its predecessor. She felt a peculiar but familiar sliding sensation inside her arm as he gave her cells a regenerative boost.  
  
“There! Shouldn’t be long before you’re out of it.” He held it out proudly. “What do you think, Rose?”   
  
She peered at the Doctor’s new toy. “Looks almost the same as the old one.”  
  
“I know. I liked that screwdriver. Three bodies that went through, I’ll have you know. Why mess with perfection?”  
  
It suddenly occurred to Rose that she didn’t know what regeneration the Doctor was on. She’d thought about it when he first regenerated, and again with Sarah Jane, but hadn’t felt comfortable enough to ask after each instance, and she’d eventually forgotten. She knew he was over nine hundred years old and his bodies could last for centuries if he let them.   
  
“What number are you on?” she asked.  
  
“This makes my sixth screwdriver,” he said, still examining it closely.  
  
“No, I mean, what body are you on?”  
  
He froze for a second, then looked up, all giddiness forgotten. “What?”  
  
“Which regeneration are you on?” Rose asked. “Sarah Jane said you’d been different when she knew you–I showed her a picture of the old you last time we were there an’ she didn’t recognize you. And what you just said about that bein’ your sixth your screwdriver…”  
  
“Tenth,” he said.  
  
She blinked. “But you just said–”  
  
“No, I mean, I’m on my tenth reincarnation.” He said, sitting down next to her. “My eighth body died at the end of the Time War after I…” He trailed off, swallowing once, and cleared his throat. “Then you met me not long after in my ninth.” He shook his head ruefully. “I’m going through them rather quickly.”  
  
“Well, I guess that happens when you can’t stay out of trouble for five minutes.” She said lightly and he gave her an impish smile. “So, is there a limit on how many times you can regenerate or is it just never ending?”  
  
“Twelve regenerations, thirteen lives.”  
  
Rose’s eyes widened. “And…what happens after you run out of regenerations?”  
  
“I die,” he said simply. Rose looked at the mugs in her hands, trying to process that. He was on his tenth body, so he could only have three more and then he’d be dead. Finished. His life extinguished from the universe, along with the legacy of the Time Lords. And what about her? What happened if he ran out before she died?   
  
He could probably tell where her thoughts had gone, because he spoke again in a cheerful tone, “But don’t worry! I quite like this body. I plan on keeping it for a while. Now, let’s go get Miss Martha Jones.”   
  
Rose ran the mugs back to the kitchen, which was closer to the console room than it had been earlier, then hurried back, arriving just as the TARDIS touched down. “Here we are!” he said happily. “The night we left, isn’t that right?” he glanced up.  
  
The TARDIS hummed happily.   
  
“Good enough for me!” Rose said, heading for the doors. The Doctor grabbed his coat and followed her. Rose peeked outside. It was nighttime, and definitely 21st century or thereabouts. But the TARDIS had seemed pretty content to let them pick up Martha, so she had to hope they were in the right place.   
  
“Well, go on, then. She can’t be too far. Ooh,” the Doctor furrowed his brow. “That sounds interesting.”  
  
Rose listened. From somewhere beyond the alleyway, she could hear several voices raised in anger, one of which was annoyingly high and nasally.  
  
“Humans,” he muttered.   
  
Rose followed the voices out of the alley and down the street. She paused at the corner, glancing back to make sure the Doctor was behind her, then peered around to see what the fuss was about. A blonde woman in heels and a glitzy dress was in the street, saying something about drugs and the news, while an older black woman insulted her intelligence. A black man stood between them, one hand on his forehead, and behind the woman were two young women and one young man. The girls she recognized. One of them was Martha, the bloke was probably her brother, and she reckoned the girl, the one who’d been with Martha near the ambulance, was their sister. They seemed to be having a go at each other with Martha caught in the middle looking weary.   
  
“I’m never talking to your family again!” the blonde declared, whirling around and storming away in a huff.   
  
“Annalise!” The man called.   
  
“Oh, stay!” The black woman shouted. “Have a nice party, Clive!”  
  
“Don’t you dare!” The man, Clive, shouted after Annalise, “I’m putting my foot down.”  
  
“Make a fool of yourself!” The woman who must’ve been Martha’s mother hollered at him.  
  
“This is me putting my foot down!” But Clive ended up chasing after the blonde anyway. “Annaliese!”  
  
“Dad!”  
  
“GOD KNOWS YOU’VE BEEN DOING IT FOR THE LAST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS, WHY STOP NOW?!”  
  
“Mum, don’t!”   
  
“Annalise, come back!”  
  
“I asked the DJ and he’s playing that song that you love!”  
  
“Dad! Come on!”  
  
The group scattered their own ways, leaving Martha alone on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant looking miserable and resigned. She looked around for a moment, as if deciding what the hell she should do now, but then she noticed Rose standing at the corner, arms folded, smiling lightly with her eyebrows raised. Martha tilted her head to the side. Rose’s smile widened into a grin and she jerked her head the way she came and walked back down the sidewalk, grabbing the Doctor’s arm as she passed him. The two of them retreated to the TARDIS as the sound of heels against concrete drew closer.  
  
When Martha looked around the corner she couldn’t help but grin as she saw the duo from the hospital leaning against a giant blue box with the words Police Public Call Box at the top. She sighed, smiling, and they smiled back. They both appeared calm and healthy like they all hadn’t nearly died earlier, like it was just another ordinary day. The only evidence to the contrary was the bright pink cast on Rose’s arm.  
  
“I went to the moon today.” She said, not seeing how they could be so relaxed about it. Her entire body was still thrumming with excitement.  
  
“Bit more peaceful than down here.” the Doctor said.  
  
She started towards them. “You never even told me who you are.”  
  
“Sure we did.” He replied. “The Doctor and Rose Tyler. ‘S nothing more to it, really.”  
  
“But what sort of species? It’s not every day I get to ask that.”  
  
“She’s human, like I said.” He nodded to Rose. “And I’m a Time Lord.”   
  
“Right,” she made a face. “Not pompous at all then.”  
  
“Oh, not at all,” Rose snickered.   
  
The Doctor smiled. “Rose tells me that you saved my life earlier.”   
  
“Well, I guess so. But if she hadn’t known about you having two hearts I wouldn’t have–”  
  
“But you still tried,” Rose interrupted. She felt like she had to make Martha understand the enormity of what she’d done. Rose had given up, resigned herself to die beside the man she loved more than anything else in the universe, but Martha had seen a tiny shred of hope, seized it, and gave them all their lives back. “I thought it was already too late. If you hadn’t tried, we’d all be dead. Everyone in that hospital.”  
  
“Everyone on this half of the planet, actually.” The Doctor said. “Now how many people can say that?”  
  
Martha smiled, embarrassed.   
  
“Well, we just thought, since you saved my life and I’ve got a brand new sonic screwdriver which needs road-testing, you might fancy a trip.”  
  
“What, into space?” she asked doubtfully.   
  
“Well.”  
  
“But I can’t. I’ve got exams. I’ve got things to do. I have to go into town first thing and pay the rent. I’ve got my family going mad.”  
  
“It’s alright to be scared, you know. I had to go find my mum, pay off my debts, and take care of my useless lump of a boyfriend.” Rose told her. “I was afraid, too. I told him no.”  
  
Martha frowned. “But you’re here now.”  
  
“Yeah, ‘cause first time he asked, he forgot to mention one tiny little detail about our ship here.”  
  
The Doctor leaned forward, smiling. “It can travel in  _time_.”   
  
Martha shook her head. “Get out of here.”  
  
“It can.”  
  
“Come on, now that is going too far.”  
  
“I’ll prove it.” The Doctor said. “Rose, do you fancy a bite to eat?”  
  
“Uh, sure?” She frowned, confused, not seeing how food would help.  
  
He pushed open the door for her and the two of them stepped inside. She closed the door behind her and he bounded towards the console. “Doctor, what are you–?“  
  
“Remember what she said earlier?” he asked, fiddling with a dial. “She saw you on Chancellor this morning with chips. Can you think of a better way to prove we time travel?”  
  
Rose grinned, “Oh, you’re brilliant, you are.”  
  
The Doctor quickly set the TARDIS for this morning near the chippy on Chancellor street and dug out a fiver from his pocket, handing it to Rose. “Hurry up,” he said. “Can’t miss her or it’s a paradox. She should be coming on the other side of the street in a few minutes.”  
  
“Are you coming?”   
  
“Nah. She only saw you, not me.”  
  
“Don’t you disappear,” she warned playfully and Rose raced out of the TARDIS. She weaved expertly through the throngs of people who were blissfully unaware of the event about to take place at the nearby hospital in just a few hours.   
  
She emerged from the chippy a few minutes later and munched on her favorite food while waited for Martha. She tried to go easy on them because apparently she had to offer some to Martha, but dammit she was hungry, and the delicious smell wafting up to her nose was not helping. Five minutes passed, Rose scanned the crowds of people heading towards the hospital intently, and then she spotted her nearing the corner, her hair pulled back the way it had been when they’d met, wearing a denim jacket much like the one Rose currently had on, with a cell phone pressed to her ear. Rose crossed the street quickly, careful not to spill the chips, and reached her just as she was closing her phone with a scoff.  
  
“Want some chips?” She asked, holding up the carton to Martha.   
  
The woman who would become her friend in a few hours blinked, completely baffled. “Uh…um…n-no thank you.”  
  
Rose shrugged. “Suit yourself.”   
  
She turned on her heel and walked away, leaving Martha staring after her in astonishment. Mission complete. Later that evening, the TARDIS rematerialized mere seconds after it vanished before Martha’s incredulous eyes, and Rose emerged from the TARDIS, holding a cup of chips.  
  
“Sure you don’t want some chips?” she asked, holding out one. Martha gaped at her, realizing suddenly why Rose’s outfit had looked so familiar a few minutes ago.   
  
The Doctor poked his head out. “Told you.”   
  
Martha shook her head. “No but…that was this morning. But…did you? Oh my God, you can travel in time!” She breathed the last word, her eyes wide with amazement.   
  
Rose grinned and popped the chip in her mouth. The Doctor reached over her shoulder and snatched a chip for himself, earning a light smack on the hand. “Hey, I paid for those!” He protested.  
  
“But hold on–if you could see me this morning, why didn’t you tell me not to go into work?” She asked.  
  
Rose looked at her like she was mad. “You mean besides the fact that havin’ you there saved half the planet?”  
  
“Crossing into established events is strictly forbidden.” The Doctor deadpanned. “Except for chips.”  
  
Martha grinned at the pair, unable to believe what was standing right in front of her, and praying that it wasn’t some insane dream. That this wasn’t Oz and she’d wake up tomorrow back in her flat. “And that’s your spaceship?”  
  
The Doctor nodded, stepping out of the doorway and pulling it shut behind him. “It’s called the TARDIS.”  
  
Martha took a few steps forward, reaching out to touch the big blue box. It looked like wood, it felt like wood, but what kind of spaceships were made of wood and shaped like phone boxes?  
  
“Time And Relative Dimension In Space.” Rose explained.   
  
“Your spaceship is made of wood.” She stated and they just smiled at her. “There’s not much room. Isn’t it a bit intimate?”  
  
“Oh, you think so?” The Doctor pushed open the door and stepped out of the way. “Take a look.”   
  
Rose walked around him, stepping into the TARDIS, and motioned for Martha to follow. She did and her eyes widened in wonder as she took in the giant console room with strange holes in the wall, a round control pane in the center surrounding a glowing green cylinder in the middle of the room, lights at the top, and coral-like structures supporting the whole thing. The TARDIS hummed a welcome.  
  
The Doctor stepped inside behind her, sharing an amused look with Rose. “Welcome to the TARDIS.” Rose said, sweeping her arms out wide.   
  
“No, no, no, no.” The smile faded from Martha’s face and she retreated out the door. “But it’s just a box!”   
  
The Doctor rubbed his eye with a finger and, laughing, Rose asked, “Was I like that?”  
  
He nodded. “Yep.”  
  
“But it’s huge!” Martha reappeared in the doorway. “How does it do that?” She knocked on the side again to confirm, “It’s wood. …It’s like a box with that room just rammed in.” She walked back inside and looked around again.  
  
“More than just this room,” Rose muttered.  
  
“It’s…it’s…bigger on the inside!” She exclaimed and the Doctor, predicting this, mouthed along with her.  
  
“Is it? I hadn’t noticed.” He said sarcastically and shut the door behind her. He pulled off his coat and tossed it unceremoniously onto the coral. He strode over to the console and immediately began preparing to take them into the Vortex.  
  
“But, is there a crew, like a navigator and stuff? Where is everyone?”  
  
“Just me and Rose,” the Doctor said. “Sometimes we have guests. I mean, some friends, traveling alongside. But usually it’s just us."  
  
“I’ve been with him for about two years now,” Rose smiled. “Best two years of my life. But we haven’t had anyone else since…well, since my mate, Mickey, but that was a bit ago.”  
  
“Where’s he now?” Martha asked, noting the pain in her voice.  
  
Rose swallowed. “He lives in a parallel word, with my mum and my–Pete…and…their baby, by now, I s’pose.” She looked down at the empty chip container in her hand then folded it as small as she could and shoved it in her pocket to dispose of later.  
  
“Why aren’t you with them?”  
  
Rose and the Doctor looked at each other simultaneously and Martha didn’t miss the flurry of unasked questions and answers and emotions that passed between them before the Doctor turned back to the console and Rose looked at Martha again. “Someone’s got to look after this idiot. He’s completely hopeless without me.”  
  
“I’ll have you know I survived nine hundred years without your help.”  
  
“And every day I wonder how,” she shot back.   
  
Nine hundred years? Now they really had to be joking.   
  
“Here we go!” He shouted, dancing around the TARDIS pressing buttons and flicking switches. “Close down the gravitic anomalizer… Rose, fire up the helmic regulator. The red one.” Rose turned around and grabbed one of the many handles, turning it quickly. “And finally…” he paused for dramatic effect. “The hand brake.”  
  
He stepped around, grabbing onto the lever that would send them off. “Ready?” he asked Martha.  
  
“No.”   
  
“Off we go.” And he pulled the lever down. The TARDIS, annoyed at the Doctor’s dramatics, made sure to give her occupants a good jolting as she took off. The three of them fell to the floor, or the pilot’s seat in the Doctor’s case. They quickly recovered, though, holding onto the console for support.  
  
“It’s a bit bumpy!” Martha noted over the engines.  
  
The Doctor grinned. “Welcome aboard, Miss Jones!”


	6. Telepathy and Time Travel

When the jarring and shaking stopped, the Doctor stepped away from the console, looking pleased. “Now, then! Where do you want to go? We’ll start with Earth, nothing too dangerous for your first go-round, I think. Past or future?”  
  
Martha opened and closed her mouth like a fish for a few moments. “W-what? I have to pick?”  
  
“Well, this is a thank-you gift. It’s only fair you’d get to pick. Want to know the future of the Earth? Or is there something in the past you’ve always wished to see? All of Earth’s past and future to choose from. Well,” he amended, “as long as I don’t risk bumping into myself.  _That_  isn’t something you’d probably like to see.”  
  
“Why’s that?” Rose asked curiously.  
  
“We tend to argue. A lot.” He scratched the back of his neck. “And, well, there’s always a risk for a major paradox and the universe imploding. Though, I think I’m due to run into one of my past selves soon, actually…” he frowned, as if trying to remember something complex. “Ah, well, I’ll remember it when it’s time. So anyway! Past or future?”  
  
Martha looked at Rose. “Where’d you pick for your first time?”  
  
“Future,” Rose said. “He wanted to impress me, took me to the actual end of the world.”  
  
“What, seriously?” Martha looked at the Doctor. “Your first date and you took her to watch the world die?”  
  
“Yup,” Rose said. “Sun expanded…Earth went boom. Better warn you now: he likes exploding things. First time I met him he blew up my job. Remember when 10 Downing Street blew up? That was him, too.”  
  
The Doctor cleared his throat. “Forgive me if I have to blow things up to save the world.”  
  
“What about that Christmas when all the people went to the roof?” Martha asked. “That ship blew up. Was that you, too?”  
  
“No,” the Doctor’s mood darkened quicker than she would’ve believed possible. “That wasn’t me. I’d convinced them to go in peace and never return.  _Torchwood_  blew them up anyway.” He said the name with such venom, and Rose’s expression darkened at it, so Martha figured it was a question best saved for later.  
  
“And what about that shooting ship shaped like a star last Christmas?”  
  
“Partially responsible, yes.” Rose nodded.  
  
“C’mon, now,” the Doctor complained. “Past or future?”  
  
“U-uh…um…I don’t know! You pick!”   
  
The Time Lord grinned. “As you wish, Miss Jones. Past it is, then!”   
  
“Nowhere with dinosaurs.” Rose said immediately.   
  
“Rose,” he sighed, “I told you–the ankylosaurus is an  _herbivore_. It wasn’t going to eat you.”  
  
“I don’t care,” she folded her arms. “It was big, it had teeth, it was lookin’ at me, and it roared.”  
  
He sighed. “Can stare into the eyestalk of an angry Dalek but when faced with a docile dinosaur…”   
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“Alright, I’ve set our course for anywhere before the year 2000 AD and after 2000 BC, with the exception of anywhere plague infested or in need of a young blonde sacrifice. We’re in no hurry to repeat that particular incident.”   
  
“Thanks,” Rose muttered.   
  
Martha shook her head. “I’ve gone mad, haven’t I?”  
  
The Doctor pressed a few buttons on the console then frowned. “Hmm. There’s something I need to adjust real quick before we land. Rose, why don’t you take Martha to the wardrobe?”  
  
Rose nodded. “Yep. C’mon, Martha.”  
  
Martha didn’t move. “Wardrobe? You mean there’s  _more_  than this?”  
  
“Of course there is,” the Doctor said as if it should have been obvious. “Do you think we eat and sleep in here? Well, we have a few times, but that’s beside the point. There’s hundreds of rooms inside this ship, most of them you’ll never see, but if you’re looking for something, you’ll usually be able to find it.”   
  
Martha stared.  
  
“Now, off you go. Oh, and should you happen to find the swimming pool, don’t get in. I haven’t gotten around to fixing the heater yet. Actually, if you find it, let me know where it is, would you? I haven’t seen it for a few weeks.”   
  
“Swimming pool,” she whispered.  
  
Rose smiled at her sympathetically and motioned for her to come. “C’mon before he talks your ears off. Be back in a tick, Doctor!”  
  
“Yeah, and where have I heard that before?” he grumbled.   
  
“Shut up.”  
  
Martha followed Rose out of the console room into the hallway. The walls were a shade darker than beige and pieces of coral extended from the wall in several places, usually up to the ceiling; in other places, bits poked out at one part and went back in further down. The TARDIS hummed contently around them, inquiring in her own way about Martha. Apparently their new passenger was smart but not easily trusting, nor completely ready to believe everything her new friends were saying and would probably get upset when she learned that the TARDIS had already made a place in the back of Martha’s mind.  
  
Rose bit her lip, glancing at the older woman. She’d accepted the alien stuff straight away, but it was the fact that the TARDIS got into her head that angered her, and that the Doctor had forgot to mention that. If she was going to stick around for any length of time, there were things she  _had_  to know, things Rose wished had been explained to her.  
  
“What do you think?” Rose asked.  
  
“It’s…just…I don’t even…” She trailed off. “Do all these doors have rooms behind them?”  
  
“Yep,” Rose said, popping the ‘p’. “Some bigger than others. But you never really know what you’re gonna find. I’m pretty close to the TARDIS so she usually lets me know when I’m where I want to be, but if you decide to stay with us for a bit, you might need to put a marker on your door.”  
  
“’She?’”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You called the ship a ‘she.’ I know they call boats ‘she’ but you said it like…like it’s actually a  _she_.”  
  
“She is,” Rose said. “The TARDIS isn’t just a ship. She’s alive. She thinks and feels, not exactly like we do, but she’s not jus’ a hunk of metal.”  
  
“Look, you both have said a lot of mad things since we’ve met, but this…” Martha shook her head. “A sentient ship?”  
  
Rose said a few words that she knew in the dominant language on one of the several asteroid markets they’d been to. “What did I just say?” she asked in English.  
  
Martha sighed. “You asked me how much for my necklace. It’s not for sale.”  
  
“I wasn’t speaking English,” Rose said as they rounded another corner. She was beginning to think the TARDIS was purposefully prolonging their journey so she could talk Martha through the basics.   
  
“Then how did I understand you?”  
  
“The TARDIS translates for you.” Rose said. “Anything you hear and read will be in English since that’s the language you know the most, and it’s the same for anyone who hears you speak. Except swear words, she doesn’t translate those.”  
  
“How’s that?”  
  
“She’s telepathic.” Rose tapped her head. “I could be talking in an alien language right now and you wouldn’t know. Don’t worry,” she added quickly, “she doesn’t read your innermost thoughts or make you think anything you don’t want to, I promise. I was worried about that in the beginning. But she can help you find things you want or need, or if you want privacy, she can make sure you’re never found.” She brushed her hands along a thick patch of coral along the wall. “Right now, we need the wardrobe, but she knows I need to explain this to you, so we could probably open every single door and never find it.”  
  
Martha stopped waking and put her hands over her mouth, closing her eyes. “This is…this is just…”   
  
“Too much?” Rose asked sympathetically.   
  
Martha shook her head, unsurely at first, then more vigorously. “No. I’m fine. I just need time to process this. I went to the moon today, I helped a bunch of rhinos kill a vampire, I saved the lives of billions of people, and now I’m on a ship that’s bigger on the inside; that can travel in space and apparently time; that’s telepathic and alive, with an alien and a human…who acts like it’s the most ordinary thing in the world.”  
  
Rose tilted her head. “Do you want to go back?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Do you want to go home? Because you can, you know: go back. He won’t ever force you to stay if you really want to leave. If all of this is too much for you, we can go back in there right now and tell the Doctor to land us back in that alley, or even in your flat if you want. And you’ll never see us again and your life will go back to the way it was.”  
  
Martha considered this, her face a bit sad, but otherwise smooth. “You said earlier, in the hospital, that you’re used to that kind of stuff.”  
  
Rose nodded.  
  
“Does…that happen often? I mean, is that a normal day?”  
  
“Well, I’ve never had Judoon pull me to the moon, but with the Doctor, there’s no more normal days.”  
  
“Is it…worth it?”  
  
“Oh yes,” Rose whispered, her eyes shining. “The universe is full of evil and ugliness, just like Earth, but it’s also  _beautiful_. So many places and people and things beyond anything you can imagine. I could live for as long as the Doctor and never see it all. I would rather die than give this up.”   
  
“And you fancying the Doctor has nothing to do with it?”  
  
“Maybe,” she smiled. “Just a bit.”  
  
Martha took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. “I’ll give it a go,” she decided. “I’m not sayin’ I want to stay, but…I want to see this. I  _need_  to see this…or I’ll always wonder, you know? A sentient ship, aliens, time travel…let’s do it. ”  
  
Rose’s smile broadened into a grin. “Well, come on, then. Let’s go get changed.”   
  
As if on cue, the thick weaving of coral on the wall next to them shifted, twisting and sliding out of the way to reveal a simple door. Martha looked at Rose with wide eyes and Rose grinned back at her, tongue between her teeth, and inclined her head towards the door. Martha reached out and slowly turned the handle, pushed the door open, and stepped into the wardrobe.   
  
There was a central platform that led to a narrow spiral staircase in the center of the room that led to the upper levels, as well as the ones below the platform. Clothes of all colors, sizes, and styles were hung from the many, many racks. It was like he’d stolen a bunch of costume rooms out of Hollywood or something and crammed the contents together.  
  
“Oh my God,” she breathed.   
  
Rose walked past her to a coatrack where a big leather jacket hung. Martha couldn’t see the blonde woman’s face, but there was something solemn, almost wistful, about the way she reached out to touch it. She ran her fingertips along the back of it, her head cocked to the side.  
  
“Whose is that?” Martha asked, stepping up behind her.  
  
“It’s the Doctor’s,” Rose murmured. “It’s what he wore when I first met him…”  
  
“Looks a bit big for him.”  
  
Rose smiled sadly. “He was a bit bigger then.”  
  
“How do you mean?”  
  
She shook her head. “That’s something he’ll tell you on his own. He didn’t even tell me about it until…well…” She licked her lips and bit her lower one, then she shook her head quickly and backed away from the leather jacket. “Right, let’s get on with it.”  
  
“But,” Martha looked around the room again. “How do we know what to choose from?”   
  
Rose looked up at the ceiling expectantly then the lights on the left side of the third level flickered on and off. Rose pointed at it then dashed up the stairs.  
  
A sentient ship that knew fashion. Oh, yes. She’d definitely gone mad. And, strangely, Martha Jones didn’t care one bit.   
  
Half an hour later, the Doctor leaned against the console, legs crossed, waiting impatiently for his companions to get back from the wardrobe. Humans–or, more specifically, human females–took  _ages_  to get ready.   
  
He’d given up trying to drag Rose on an adventure first thing in the morning. She always had to wake up, then get dressed, fix her hair, put her makeup on, then go get her tea…took at least forty minutes. He’d taken to bringing her tea first thing if he wanted to go somewhere, just to speed things along. But she already had her tea and her makeup and she was wide-awake. By all accounts that should’ve cut the prep time by at least twenty-five minutes. Apparently not.  
  
He exhaled loudly, his head falling back, and he resisted the urge to bang it against the rotor. He hated waiting. They’d learned early on that this body was not patient.   
  
 _Can’t you tell them to get a move on?_ He complained to his ship. But apparently she was on Rose’s side again, because the rotor hummed once, short and curt, as close to a ‘no’ as he’d ever gotten from her.   
  
He groaned in frustration.   
  
 _Can you move the wardrobe door closer?_  He tried.   
  
Sparks fizzed from the console near his hand and the Doctor jumped away, cradling his slightly singed hand protectively. “Oi!” he complained. “Stop it!”  
  
He felt her amusement wash over him.  
  
“Why can’t you be on my side for once?”  
  
Another wave of amusement.  
  
He sighed and walked to the doorway that led deeper into the ship. “Ro-ose!” he called. “Martha! Hurry up! We’re gonna be late!”  
  
“Late for what?” Rose’s voice came a moment later from not too far away. “We goin’ somewhere particular?”  
  
“No… not really…”  
  
“Well, what’s the rush, then?” She stepped around the corner and effectively robbed him of speech.   
  
She was wearing a floor-length light brown dress, with a darker bodice that laced up the front, and sleeves that flared into bells at the elbow, all the way down to her hands, effectively hiding most of her cast. Around her neck was a simple black choker. Her hair was twisted into a single French braid in the back. The ensemble was simple, nothing about it screamed either nobility or peasantry, yet it flattered her curves in a way no simple commoner would dare. She was…Rose.   
  
Rose was grinning, her tongue poking out, and a blush reddened her cheeks. “Doctor?”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“You’re doing it again.”  
  
“What?” he blinked. She inclined her head. “Oh. Oh, right! Sorry. You look beautiful.”  
  
She lifted up her skirts and poked her foot out, revealing a sturdy black boot instead of the appropriate footwear for the era. “Just in case,” she said.   
  
He grinned. “That’s my girl. Where’s Martha?” He craned his neck to peer over her shoulder. “Is she planning on making an appearance any time soon?”  
  
“She was right behind me,” Rose stepped around him into the console room, then lowered her voice. “I told her about the TARDIS bein’ telepathic and all that.”  
  
He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Ooh. How’d she take it?”  
  
“Could’ve been worse. It was a bit much for her, though.”  
  
“She want to go home?”  
  
“Not yet. She wants proof before she makes any decisions.”  
  
“What, and the TARDIS wasn’t enough?” He muttered. “Oh, here she is!”  
  
“Okay, I’m coming in!” Martha stepped into the console room looking decidedly embarrassed. She had on a long-sleeved deep red dress with a white undershirt visible beneath the bodice. “Don’t laugh!”   
  
“Now where have I heard that before?” the Doctor grinned at Rose. “Don’t worry, Martha, you look amazing. Really.”  
  
“It’s not too much?” she turned from side to side, looking down at herself.   
  
“I told you, you look fine.” Rose said. “So, we landed yet?”  
  
“Nope!” The Doctor danced over to the console. “But we will now! You ready?” He gripped the lever that would send them through the Vortex. Martha’s eyes widened. “Hold on–here we go! Allons-y!” he shouted and pulled the lever down.   
  
The TARDIS gave a violent lurch and Martha screamed as she was knocked to the floor. Rose managed to steady herself on the console but didn’t dare let go to help Martha up. Loudly declaring that the Doctor was mad and that the bloody ship was determined to knock her about, Martha struggled to her feet by holding onto the railing and somehow managed to not bust her chin open.  
  
The Doctor practically climbed onto the console to press multiple buttons at once. “Rose! That small lever, push it up, then press the middle button over there.” Rose did, moving around the console with ease despite the bucking of the ship. “Hold on!”  
  
“I AM!” Martha screamed.   
  
With one final jerk, the Doctor was thrown off the console, catching himself on a coral, Rose landed back in the seat, and Martha very nearly fell, but she managed to stay upright, gripping the railing for dear life. The Doctor pushed himself up, grinning happily, and offered a hand to Rose.  
  
“Blimey!” Martha gasped, letting go of the rail. “Do you have to pass a test to fly this thing?”  
  
“Yep, and I failed.” The Doctor said cheerfully, pulling on his coat.   
  
“Aren’t you gonna change?” Martha hitched up her skirt and ran across the console room.  
  
“Why? What’s wrong with my suit?” He stopped in front of the door and turned to face them: “Ladies, outside this door…brave new world.”  
  
“Where are we?”   
  
“Take a look.” The Doctor opened the door and inclined his head. “Ladies first.”   
  
“First timers privilege,” Rose stepped aside and motioned for Martha to go before her. Martha bit her lip, glancing at Rose with an eager grin, then walked past the two time travelers and stepped out of the TARDIS. She didn’t look at the ground or take a tentative step like Rose did, possibly because she didn’t quite believe in the whole time travel thing just yet, but when she made it outside she took a few steps and froze. The Doctor and Rose followed her out.  
  
Rose breathed in and her nose flared at the smell of animals, unwashed bodies, mud, waste, and other things she didn’t want to think about. But over that she could smell the warm night air, the aroma of baking food, and something she could never quite describe but had always considered it to be the smell of Earth. No other planet had that scent, though New Earth was close.   
  
A group of children with dirty faces ran past. Teenagers and adults milled about, talking or completing tasks for the evening. Wagons, barrels, hay, and the occasional stall were situated in front of the double-story houses that lined the street, which was lit by torches along the walls.   
  
“Oh you’re kidding me. You are so kidding me. Oh, my God!” Martha exclaimed. “We did it! We traveled in time.”  
  
“Of course we did,” the Doctor said. “Come on, Martha, do you think we’d go through the trouble of getting you all pretty just to drop you back in the twenty-first century?”  
  
Martha didn’t answer him, still gazing around in disbelief. “Where are we? No, sorry,” she held up her hand. “Got to get used to this whole new language.  _When_  are we?”  
  
The Doctor started and grabbed both girls’ arms, pulling them back. “Mind out!” he warned just as someone above them hollered something that sounded suspiciously like ‘loo’ and a bucketful of waste was dumped onto the spot they'd been standing just seconds ago.   
  
“Somewhere…before the invention of the toilet,” the Doctor said, nose wrinkled. “Sorry about that.”  
  
Martha waved it off. “I’ve seen worse. I’ve worked the late-night shift, A&E.”  
  
The Doctor grinned, looping his arm through Rose’s, and they started off. Martha reached out. “Wait! Are we safe? I mean, can we move around and stuff?”   
  
“Of course we can,” the Doctor assured her. “Why do you ask?”   
  
Martha gave him a look. “It’s like in the films. You step on a butterfly, you change the future of the human race.”  
  
“I’ll tell you what, then, don’t…step on any butterflies. What have butterflies ever done to you?”  
  
“Oh, stop,” Rose chided. He smiled, unabashed, and started off again. This time Martha followed, but she wasn’t done yet.   
  
“But what if–I don’t know. What if I kill my grandfather?”  
  
The Doctor turned. “Are you planning to?”  
  
She laughed. “No.”  
  
“Well then.” He held his other arm out and she took it. They continued along the street, looking around at the people and buildings. Out of the TARDIS’s perception filter, people began to notice them. Some nodded, some tipped their hats respectfully, and everyone was careful to get out of their way. Nice clothes tended to have that effect on the locals.  
  
“And this is London?” Martha asked.   
  
“I think so.” The Doctor craned his neck, looking for any identifiable landmarks that would give him a clue.   
  
Rose grinned cheekily. “Which probably means we’re somewhere like Naples.”   
  
“Oi! My driving is not that bad,” he protested.   
  
“Our landing says otherwise,” Martha grumbled. “And you failed your test, which means your driving  _is_  bad.”  
  
“That was well over seven hundred years ago. I’ve gotten a lot better since then.”   
  
“Oh then, I’m  _really_  glad I didn’t meet you until now.”  
  
“Martha Jones, I’d like to see you try flying a ship meant to have six pilots on your own–with the occasional help.” He nodded to Rose.   
  
“No thanks,” she grumbled.  
  
“What year are we in?” Rose asked. “Or do I need to go find a newspaper?”  
  
“Well, judging from the architecture and the local decorum,” he glanced down at Rose. “And what the TARDIS showed you to wear…I’d say right about, um, ooh, 1599. Feels like 1599, too.”  
  
“Oh, but hold on. Am I all right? I’m not gonna get carted off as a slave, am I?” Martha asked.  
  
The Doctor looked dumbstruck. “Why would they do that?”  
  
“Not exactly white, in case you haven’t noticed.”  
  
“I’m not even human.” He pointed out. “Just walk about like you own the place. Always works for me.”  
  
Rose leaned forward so Martha could see her. “Plus, you look like a proper Lady. They won’t dare touch you.”  
  
“Besides,” the Doctor said, “Apart from some obvious things, Elizabethan England, not so different from your time. Look over there.” He inclined his head at a man behind them shoveling manure. “You’ve got recycling.”  
  
Martha wrinkled her nose a bit.  
  
“A water cooler moment,” he nodded at two men talking around a water barrel.   
  
“–in poison, and the trumpets will sound, heralding the Kingdom of God!” A man in black turned this way and that, one hand in the air, preaching to everyone that passed. He angled his body so he was facing the Doctor, Rose, and Martha. “And the Earth will be consumed by flame!” He cried.   
  
The Doctor laughed once, “Global warming.” The moved on, leaving the preacher with a stunned look on his face.   
  
“Oh yes,  _and_ …entertainment!” He grinned. “Popular entertainment for the masses! …If I’m right, we’re just down the river by Southwark…” He picked up speed, forcing the girls to run to keep up with him. “Right next to–!”  
  
They rounded a corner and stopped, the Doctor with an excited grin on his face. “Oh yes! The Globe Theatre!” He said with relish. “Brand new, just opened. Though, strictly speaking, it’s not a globe; it’s a tetradecagon, fourteen sides, containing the man himself!”  
  
“Whoa you don’t mean…” Martha looked at him, eyes and mouth stretched wide. “Is Shakespeare in there?”  
  
“Oh, yes!” He exclaimed. “You met him once, Rose. Remember?”  
  
She laughed once, exasperated. “How could I  _forget_?”  
  
He grinned at her. “Ah, good one. Well, Miss Tyler, Miss Jones, would you lovely ladies accompany me to the theater?”   
  
“I do believe I will, Mr. Smith.” Rose said, tongue between her teeth. She leaned her head against his shoulder contently for a moment.   
  
“And just think, Martha, when you get back, you can tell everyone you’ve seen Shakespeare.”

Martha nodded. “Ooh, yeah. Then I could get sectioned!”


	7. The Wordsmith

Rose had been to the Globe Theatre before. Once with the Doctor in his last body, once with him in his current body when they’d shown up to help put out the fire that would consume the building in a decade or so. It was unlike any other theatre she’d been in—and she’d been in many, many theatres, all across time and space. There was something…magical about it.

The Doctor had fished out enough money for the three of them out of his pockets (though why he had money from the 1500s in his pockets was anyone’s guess) and they got to sit in one of the balconies reserved for the nobles. They’d been given comfortable seats with cushions and a great view, over the heads of the lower class citizens who stood in front of the stage. It wasn’t a bad deal, really, having to stand when the cost of admission was only a penny, but Rose preferred to sit through a play that would last for more than two hours, thank you very much.

Tonight would feature _Love’s Labour’s Lost_. Rose knew absolutely nothing about it other than it was a comedy, and she only knew that bit because the Doctor prattled about it all the way upstairs. He’d tried to convince her to read all of Shakespeare’s works at one point, but Rose hadn’t been able to make heads or tales of _Romeo and Juliet_ while she was in school and she doubted she’d fair better with his other plays. The Doctor offered to read them to her and explain, but Rose knew enough about _Romeo and Juliet_ to know that having the Doctor read it to her would be embarrassing. She’d suggested he find her some Shakespeare-to-modern translation copies of the plays, but he’d found the very idea scandalous. So Rose was left with a very poor knowledge of Shakespeare and the details of his works.

The same could not be said for Martha. She was not on the same level as the Doctor, but from what Rose could gather, she’d been able to make sense of Shakespeare’s complicated language enough to enjoy what she’d read and to have a legitimate conversation with him. 

The Doctor was grinning like a kid at Christmas and Martha was lost in a daze of awe, both of them watching the play with wide eyes. Rose, however, couldn’t focus on the play for more than a few minutes at a time. There was something about the theatre that did not feel right. She’d never sensed anything wrong the other times she’d been here, but right now, the air positively tingled with an unknown energy that made Rose unable to relax. The Doctor was too absorbed in the play to notice her restlessness and Martha didn’t say anything because, for all she knew, Rose was simply bored.

Near the end, the energy spiked and Rose felt a sense of dread that she hadn’t felt since Krop Tor, when the Beast had predicted her imminent death—which had yet to occur and Rose was beginning to think it really _had_ lied. Abandoning her attempts at watching the play altogether, Rose scoured the theater with her eyes, noting every little thing and every person. Her eyes were drawn to a young lady sitting alone in the only empty box, dressed in fine clothes and jewelry fit for someone in Kensington Palace. She appeared docile and from what Rose could tell, she was beautiful. She was staring down at the stage with a patient, almost expectant expression. 

_Just some rich lady, probably with more airs than a lotto winner_ , she thought dismissively. Still, Rose found herself glancing back at the woman every few moments, not wanting to take her eyes off her. 

When the play was finished, the actors came onto stage for their bows, and the entire audience stood, clapping and cheering, hooting and whistling—Rose among them, even though she’d missed half the play. Martha was positively beaming as she applauded.

“That’s amazing! Just amazing. It’s worth putting up with the smell.” She exclaimed over the din. “And those are men dressed as women, yeah?”

“London never changes,” the Doctor replied.

Rose glanced at the woman again. She was the only one not on her feet and applauding. She simply stared at the stage.

“Where’s Shakespeare? I wanna see Shakespeare.” Martha complained—then had an idea and lifted her fist into the air, shouting, “Author! Author!” 

Rose tore her gaze away from the woman to stare at Martha and the Doctor stared as well.

“Do people shout that?” Martha asked awkwardly. “Do they shout ‘author’?”

“Author! Author!” Someone down below echoed Martha’s chant, then others followed, until the whole theater was calling for Shakespeare.

“Well…they do now,” the Doctor said. 

Then the curtain to backstage parted and outstepped the Bard himself. He gave a showy leap as he passed between two actors, and landed with an arm in the air. The crowd went wild, applauding louder than before. Martha gave a little hop of glee.   
He walked up and down the stage, smiling, bowing, blowing kisses at his public, and leaning down to slap the hands in the front row like some sort of rock star. 

“He’s a bit different to his portraits,” Martha noted.

“Good ol’ Will,” the Doctor said to himself.

Rose wished she could share their enthusiasm, but she’d already met him and she’d had to distract him by flirting—which kind of made seeing him on stage less appealing than it should have been—and she was growing ever more concerned about that woman.

“Genius,” the Doctor leaned towards Rose. “He’s a genius. He’s the genius! The most _human_ -human that’s ever been. Now we’re gonna hear him speak!” Rose nodded, trying and failing to seem interested, but _again_ the Doctor didn’t notice. “Always, he chooses the _best_ words. New, _beautiful, brilliant_ words.”

At that moment, William Shakespeare decided to crush the Doctor’s excitement by hollering, “Aaaah, shut your big fat mouths!” And while the audience roared with laughter, the Doctor’s face fell.

“Oh, well,” he muttered. 

“You should never meet your heroes.” Martha told him.

“You have excellent taste! I’ll give you that.” Shakespeare told the audience, then pointed to a man in the crowd. “Oh, that’s a wig!” The people around the man turned to look, pointing and laughing. Martha leaned forward to get a look.

The energy in the air suddenly seemed to crackle, causing hair on the back of Rose’s neck to stand straight up and her stomach to flip over. She looked at that woman again. She had a smug look her face.

“Doctor…” Rose breathed. He didn’t hear her over Shakespeare.

“It just stops!” Shakespeare was saying. “Will the boys get the girls? Well, don’t get your hose in a tangle, you’ll find out soon.” The crowd voiced their approval. “Yeah, yeah, all in good time. You don’t rush a genius.” He told them with a bow.

Two things happened simultaneously: the weird energy in the air reached a new high, hitting Rose like a punch in the gut, and Shakespeare jerked upright like a puppet on strings. A hush fell over the crowd, except for a few chuckles, as if everyone could, somewhere in the back of their minds, suddenly sense the strangeness that had Rose ready to throw up or vault herself over the heads and rails between her and the woman who she _knew_ was the cause of it. 

She was quivering with tension and, finally, the Doctor noticed. “Rose?” he asked quietly. “Rose, what is it?”

“Something’s—”

“When? …Tomorrow night!” Shakespeare declared loudly and the crowd cheered. On stage several of the actors exchanged looks that betrayed their surprise and exasperation. 

But Rose’s eyes were on the woman who was positively smirking now. 

“The premiere of my brand new play,” the Bard declared loudly. “A sequel, no less, and I call it _Loves Labour’s Won_!”

The whole theater burst into another round of cheering, except for two people: the Doctor and Rose. The woman was clapping now, pleased, and Rose felt like someone had dropped lead into her stomach. 

Rose spent the entire time they were exiting the theater looking for the woman, but it was like she had vanished into thin air. The thought didn’t settle well. She wanted to tell the Doctor, but he was absorbed in a conversation with Martha about _Loves Labour’s Won_ and something about it being a lost play. Martha suggested they try to record it and make a mint back home.

“Don’t get a brain door,” Rose muttered.

Martha looked at the Doctor for translation.

“She means to say ‘avoid temptation’ and she’s right. It’s a bad idea, Martha. You could seriously mess up the timelines. There has got to be a reason the play is lost. …Damn. I was hoping to give you a nice, peaceful trip, but I suppose we could stay a bit longer. Is that alright with you, Rose?”

_NO!_ She wanted to get out of here and away from the mysterious energy of the Globe, the woman, and the sinister feeling creeping along her skin. But it all reeked of mystery and danger, the kind of thing the Doctor loved sorting, and if they left now things would probably end badly somewhere along the line. 

So she smiled at him. “Yeah, sure. So what’s first?”

“First…” the Doctor looked around. “We go find Shakespeare.” 

“Oh yeah, sure, let’s just do that.” Martha rolled her eyes. “This is London, for God’s sake! How are we supposed to find one person in a city this big, even if he is a famous bloke?”

“Remember, we’re in 1599,” the Doctor replied. “This isn’t so much a city as it is a town. And Shakespeare isn’t just a famous bloke: he’s _the_ famous bloke. You’d have an easier time finding him than you would the Queen if she was out for a stroll.” 

Martha looked at him doubtfully. 

“No, really,” he frowned. “Watch, I’ll show you. Excuse me! You sir!” 

As it turned out, the Doctor was correct. He’d only had to ask three people if they’d seen Shakespeare or knew where he was staying before they were directed to The Elephant Inn, a fine establishment run by a reputable woman named Dolly Bailey. It was easy enough to find: Dolly was well known around the area, and they were warned that if they were lookin’ to cause a fuss, she’d have them tossed out on their backsides straight away. The Doctor didn’t seem too concerned, and Rose and Martha had to hitch up their skirts to keep pace with him once he got moving. 

He slowed outside of the in, taking a moment to let the two humans catch their breath and smooth their hair. 

“Rose, I’ve told you about me an’ Shakespeare, yeah?”

She nodded. “A bit. You helped write _Hamlet_ or somethin’ like that?”

Martha gawked. “You’re kiddin'…”

“Nope. It was a long while ago for me…long while…” he murmured, his eyes staring at something only he could see. He gave his head a quick shake. “A long time for me, but it hasn’t happened for him yet, not for about four more years, so not a word about it. And Martha? This should go without saying, but you _cannot_ tell him anything about his future, and try to avoid mentioning I’m an alien and that you’re from the future, if you can.”

Martha nodded, trying to look serious, but her lips were twitching. “Yes sir.” 

The Doctor grinned, hold his arm out to Rose. “Well then. Shall we?”

They approached a young woman with dark hair who was near the stables, helping a man unload a horse. She saw them coming and curtseyed respectfully.

“’ello sir, ma’am, ma’am,” she smiled. “What can I help you with?”

“Hello,” the Doctor said brightly. “I was told Mr. Shakespeare is staying here, is that right?”

The girl nodded. “Yes, sir. He’s just up the stairs, I think. Oh, but wait! You can’t—he doesn’t want visitors!” She called after them but they ignored her. 

Upstairs, they encountered a firm-looking blonde woman with a broom in her hands. She blocked their path, hands on her hips. 

“Patrons only,” she informed them. “If you’re wantin’ to stay the night, come on downstairs and I’ll get you signed and you can pay your fee.”

“Actually, I’m looking for Shakespeare,” the Doctor said, stepping forward. “I was told he’s up here.”

The woman’s glanced to the left quickly, almost back the way she’d come from, then she frowned at them. “And who told you that?”

“That room there?” The Doctor pointed to an open door at the end of the hallway but didn’t wait for her response. “Thank you!” He took off, leaving Dolly Bailey staring in disbelief. Rose and Martha followed him, the latter giving the woman an apologetic look. Dolly set her broom against the wall and followed. 

The Doctor was already in the room, and the girls followed him in. “I’m not interrupting, am I? Mr. Shakespeare, isn’t it?”

“Oh no.” Shakespeare put his hand on his forehead. “No, no, no, no. Who let you in?”

The Doctor kept right on grinning. Martha hid behind him, suddenly shy. The rest of Shakespeare’s words were lost on Rose, who had noticed a young maid working near the bed. Every hair on her body suddenly stood on end and adrenaline shot through her veins. _Wrong, wrong, wrong. Shouldn’t exist. Dangerous._ That wicked energy she’d sensed earlier—the girl was practically radiating it. 

Their gazes met. Rose clenched her teeth together so hard that her head hurt and her hands curled into fists. Something in the girl’s face changed and for a moment, she was hideous, her face wrinkled and her teeth sharp, and Rose felt like she was seeing her for what she actually was. And then it was gone, the girl looked human again. Her face remained cold, dangerous, but there was something almost wary in her gaze as she regarded Rose. Neither of them seemed to be willing to look away from the other.

“Excuse us, ma’am.”

Rose jumped, ending the standoff, then stepped forward so the two men who’d been seated with Shakespeare could exit the room, followed by Dolly Bailey. Martha was already taking a seat and the Doctor remained standing behind the empty chair, watching Rose. She noted the concern in his gaze as he nodded towards the chair. She smiled at him but glanced meaningfully at the maid who had used Rose’s distraction to slip away from them, closer to the wall. The Doctor frowned, looking questioningly at Rose.

He didn’t sense it, then. Was she going mad? No, she was sure she’d seen the girl change. 

The Doctor looked down at Martha. “Don’t,” he said quietly. “Don’t do that.”

Martha looked embarrassed and stopped whatever it was she’d been doing. Rose seated herself in the chair and smiled at Shakespeare. The Bard narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “Have we met? I have the strangest feeling that I’ve seen you before.”

“No,” Rose said quickly. “No, I don’t think so. I’m sure I’d remember meetin’ you, Mr. Shakespeare.”

He smiled. “You keep fine company, mister—”

The Doctor flashed his psychic paper. “Sir. Sir Doctor of the TARDIS. This is my wife, Dame Rose Tyler, and our companion, Martha Jones.” 

“Interesting,” mused Shakespeare, pointing. “That bit of paper. It’s blank.”

He lowered the paper, grinning gleefully. “Oh, that’s…very clever,” he murmured. “That proves it. Absolute genius.”

“No,” Martha said, peering at the paper. “It says so, right there. Sir Doctor, Dame Rose, Martha Jones. It says so.”

“And I say it’s blank.” Shakespeare tilted his head, studying the trio before him. 

“Psychic paper,” the Doctor explained quietly to Martha. “Um, long story. Oh, I hate starting from scratch.”

“Psychic?” Shakespeare put his hand under his chin. “Never heard that before and words are my trade. Who are you exactly? More’s to the point, who is your delicious blackamoor lady?”

Rose barely held back a snort, pressing her lips together to hide her grin, and Martha looked taken aback. 

“What did you say?”

“Oops. Isn’t that a word we use nowadays? An Ethiop girl?” Shakespeare asked. The Doctor puffed out his cheeks, exhaling slowly, and Rose pressed her lips together to stave off a laugh as Shakespeare tried again. “A swarth? A queen of Afric…”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this!” Martha laughed. 

The Doctor rubbed his eyes. “It’s political correctness gone mad. Um, Martha and Rose are from a far-off land. …Freedonia. I met them on my travels. This is Martha’s first time away, she’s—”

“Excuse me! Hold hard a moment!” A man said loudly. A ginger man in rich black and gold jewels stood in the doorway, glaring at Shakepseare. “This is abominable behavior. A new play with no warning? I demand to see a script, Mr. Shakespeare. As Master of the Revels, every new script must be registered at my office and examined by me before performed.”

Shakespeare nodded. “Tomorrow morning, first thing, I’ll send it ‘round.”

“I don’t work to your schedule, you work to mine. The script, now!” The man demanded.

“I can’t.”

“Then tomorrow’s performance is cancelled.” 

The bad feeling faded quite suddenly and Rose noticed that the girl had slipped out of the room. She wasn’t sure whether to be glad or worried, yet she couldn’t help but slump against the back of the chair in relief. 

Martha was looking between the two men. “It’s all go, ‘round here, isn’t it?” 

“I’m returning to my office for a banning order. If it’s the last thing I do, _Love’s Labours Won_ will never be played!” The ginger man declared and stormed away, leaving silence in his wake. 

“Nice bloke,” Rose remarked after a moment.

“Lynley,” Shakespeare said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry you had to witness that. Dolly!” he called. “Dolly Bailey!”

She appeared a moment later in the doorway with a tray in her hands. “Is something the matter, Will?” 

“Could we have another round of—oh!” Will straightened up. “I was just about to ask.”

She smiled, holding the tray between the three time travelers. They each took a mug and she placed the abandoned mugs left by Shakespeare’s associates. “If you need anything, just holler. Sir, there’s a chair right there if you require one.”

Rose took a sip. It was thick and heady, like cider, but not quite. Still, it was better than some of the other drinks she’d had during her travels. 

Martha took a sip, leaning back in her chair and resting her leg on her knee, completely unladylike. “Well, then…mystery solved. That’s _Love’s Labours Won_ over and done with.”

Rose’s entire body stiffened as she felt it again, so thick she was surprised no one could see it, or at least feel it. It hit her like a punch to the gut and she choked on the cider in her mouth, dropping her mug to the floor as she doubled over. She managed to swallow the liquid in her mouth and then she gasped, gulping down breaths of air, feeling very much like she was about to be sick.

“Rose!” That was the Doctor in front of her, his hands on her shoulders and his eyes wide and afraid. “Rose, what’s wrong?”

Before she got a chance to answer, from outside came a single, guttural scream. Shrieks and cries split the peaceful night air, cries for help. Everyone surged to their feet, except for Rose, who was shaking. Shakespeare was already moving for the door and Martha followed without hesitation. The Doctor knelt in front of Rose again. “Can you stand?”

Rose nodded, still trembling and nauseous, rising to her feet. He put his arm around her for support and ushered her quickly out the door. The feeling only grew worse as they descended the stairs to the courtyard. The man, Lynley, was stumbling back towards them, holding his throat and spitting up water.

“Doctor!” Martha cried. “Look!” 

“What’s wrong with him?” he wondered aloud. “Rose, try to keep upright, I need to have a look, alright?”

Rose nodded, her arms crossed over her stomach. She curled inward slightly, leaning away from the man. 

“Leave it to me!” the Doctor shouted to the people gathering and loped to Lynley’s side. Martha followed. “I’m a doctor!” 

“So am I—near enough.” 

They caught Lynley as he sagged forward. “H-h-help!” he gurgled through the water he was spewing. He jolted as if he’d been struck, mouth gaping and eyes wide. The dark energy spiked and Rose dropped onto her knees, her stomach heaving.

Then with one final cry and spurt of water, Lynley’s legs gave out and he collapsed to the ground. 

Rose gasped loudly as the feelings faded, gone as if they had never occurred. She sucked in a sharp breath and felt Dolly Baily’s hand on her arm to help her up. The Doctor was staring down the street the way Lynley had come from, Martha was bending over the man, trying to reassure him. The Doctor stopped her before she could do CPR, though. Rose thanked Dolly with a weak but genuine smile and joined Martha and the Doctor by Lynley’s body, kneeling at his head.

“I’ve never seen a death like it,” the Doctor murmured. “His lungs are full of water—he drowned and then… I dunno, like a blow to the heart, an invisible blow.” The Doctor looked at Rose. “Are you alright?”

“Y-yes…now…it—it stopped when he died.” And she felt horrible because for a brief moment, she’d been happy—relieved—when Lynley had finally keeled.

The look the Doctor gave her was piercing and she saw the wheels turning in his head. His eyes lingered on her as he stood, looking away only to address Dolly Bailey. “Good mistress, this poor fellow has died from a sudden imbalance of the humours. A natural if unfortunate demise. Call a constable and have him taken away. “

“Yes, sir,” Dolly said, disturbed. 

_She’s back._ Rose turned her head and, sure enough, the servant girl was there. From a distance, Rose noted how much she resembled the woman in the theater, except for the clothes. But Rose herself was proof that clothes did not always prove one’s status and one could easily disguise themselves if needed. 

“I’ll do it, ma’am,” she told Dolly dutifully. The girl’s eyes flicked down to their group, lingering on Rose who was glowering at her. She gave Rose a cold smirk, almost challenging her, then turned and left, taking the uneasy air with her.

“And why did you tell them that?” Martha demanded when the Doctor knelt down again.

“This lot still have one foot in the Dark Ages,” he explained. “If I tell them the truth, they’ll panic and think it was witchcraft.”

“Wasn’t it?” Rose asked. After all she’d seen with the Doctor, witchcraft wasn’t high on the list of impossible things.

He looked up at Rose darkly. “Oh, yes. And you, you sensed it. How?”

She shook her head. “I…I don’t—” she closed her eyes “—I don’t know.” 

But she had a sinking feeling that she actually did. 

Shakespeare led their procession back up to his room. The Doctor kept an arm around Rose protectively, but she was feeling fine now. The air was free of…witchcraft. Part of her felt like skipping, but that would be inappropriate considering what had just happened. The rest of her, however, was terrified. The Doctor knew something was different about her now and he wouldn’t let it go. Her only hope was that she could hold off the truth until they got safely into the TARDIS, far away from any timelines he could damage.

“I got you a room, Sir Doctor,” Dolly Bailey said from the doorway. “You, your wife, and Miss Jones are just across the landing on the left. It's the only one with two beds in here. Ladies, I noticed you didn’t have any belongings with you so I left you a pair of gowns out. Might be a bit big, but they’ll do.”

Rose smiled. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Dolly Bailey smiled as well. “My pleasure. Just leave ‘em on the bed in the mornin’.” She cast a concerned gaze over the room, her eyes lingering on Shakespeare, and she left the way she came.

“Poor Lynley,” Shakespeare said, though he didn’t actually sound very sorry. “So many strange events. Not least of all, this land of Freedonia where a woman can be a doctor?”

“Where a woman can do what she likes.” Martha corrected. 

“And you, Sir Doctor. How can a man so young have eyes so old?” 

“I do a lot of reading,” he answered quietly. 

“A trite reply,” Shakespeare nodded and the Doctor smiled just a bit. “Yeah, that’s what I’d do.” He looked at Rose. “And you, Dame Rose… Never mind the fact that I know I have seen you before—you knew something was wrong. You _knew_ …before he even screamed.”

“I…I didn’t,” she stammered, shaking her head quickly. “I just—I just choked. On the cider. I d—I didn’t know.” She felt silent, staring at the floor.

Shakespeare just looked at her, considering, and then turned to Martha. “And you, Miss Jones, you look at them like you’re surprised they exist. They’re as much of a puzzle to you as they are to me.”

The three of them exchanged nervous glances. Shakespeare was a genius, there was no arguing that, but the fact that he had managed to discern that much about them within the span of a few minutes was a bit frightening, to Martha more than any of them. 

“I think we should say goodnight,” she said quickly and left the room quickly without looking back. Rose tried to follow her, but the Doctor’s arm was locked around her and he wasn’t leaving yet. So, apparently, neither was she. She shot him an angry look.

“I must work,” Shakespeare sighed. “I have a play to complete.” He got to his feet, walking around the table as he spoke. “But I’ll get my answers tomorrow, Doctor.”

The Doctor shrugged off the bookshelf he’d been leaning against, pulling Rose with him towards the door.

“I’ll discover more about you both, and why this constant performance of yours, Sir.” 

“All the world's a stage,” the Doctor replied from the doorway.

“Ooh…I might use that,” he mused. “Good night, Doctor. Rose.”

“Nighty-night, Shakespeare.”


	8. Witchcraft

Martha was already exploring when the Doctor and Rose arrived, searching the cabinet on the far wall with a candle for light. The room was less furnished than Shakespeare’s. At least there were two beds, though, because she doubted the three of them could cram into one. Which begged the question: where did they sleep on the TARDIS? She’d have to ask later, especially if she stayed.

“Not exactly five-star, is it?”

“Oh, it’ll do,” the Doctor said dismissively. Rose slipped out from under his arm and headed for the beds. “We’ve stayed in worse.”

“I guess these would be the nightgowns.” Rose held up two long, frumpy white garments that had been laid out across the bed when Martha walked in. “They look the same size, so I guess it doesn’t matter. Do you know how to get out of that?” She nodded at the dress.

“Um, not really, no.” 

“Thought not. I’ll help.”

“What about…?” Martha nodded at the Doctor.

“Oh, right.” He held up a hand and backed towards the door. “I’ll just be outside.”

When he was gone, Martha laughed quietly. “You two seem to have this whole thing down.”

“We’ve been travelling for a while,” Rose said simply. “He left for your sake. Normally he just looks away if I have to change. Now, hold still so I can do this.”

Martha held still while Rose’s fingers expertly unlaced the bodice, then she turned right around and did hers on her own. Martha was impressed, especially since Rose’s wrist was broken. The Doctor must’ve done something to speed the healing process or Rose wouldn’t be able to move her hand that well this early on.

“You’re from London, right?” she asked as Rose worked. 

She nodded. “Of course.”

“Well, I had to check. The Doctor sounds like he’s a Londoner, too.”

“He used to sound like he was from the North,” Rose said as she slipped the bodice off.

Martha’s brow furrowed in confusion, but she decided to let that go, filing it away for later with a multitude of other questions, and asked another one that had been bugging her. “So… _when_ are you from? I mean…from the past? Future?”

“Well…” Rose said slowly. “That depends on how you want to look at things. From right now where we’re standin’, I’m from the future. But from when we picked you up, I’m from the past.”

“Oh.” Martha frowned. “Well, what year?”

“Again, depends on how you look at things.” Rose said. “But if it helps, I joined the Doctor in the beginning of 2005.”

“So, you’re from the present?” 

She was fiddling with her hair, pulling the pins out of it and untwisting the braid. She shook her hair out, combing through the wavy strands with her fingers. When she was done, she stared at Martha with her arms folded, frowning like she was trying to work out something complex. “If you wanna think of it that way,” she finally conceded. 

Rose opened the door once they were dressed and the Doctor sauntered back in, looking completely at ease. Before Martha could open her mouth to ask who would be going where, he flopped down onto one of the beds, leaning against the headboard. Rose sat down on the bed with the Doctor and he scooted over to make room for her without hesitating. She stretched out next to him and he put his arm around her. The gesture seemed almost automatic, as did the way Rose leaned closer.

Martha felt something within her soften at the sight. She hadn’t known them for more than a day but already she could tell how they felt about each other, even if they weren’t saying it out loud. You’d have to be blind not to notice. Though she wondered how Rose could love someone who wasn’t even her species and was (apparently) hundreds of years older than her. 

_Then again, love is blind_ , she thought.

“So, Doctor, witchcraft?” Rose asked. 

He didn’t seem to be in his usual chatty mood because he simply nodded. 

“That’s a surprise. I wasn’t expecting magic and stuff,” Martha laughed. “It’s a little bit Harry Potter, don’t you think?”

The Doctor grinned. “Wait ‘til you read book seven. Oooh…I cried.” He shook his head fondly.

“He did.” Rose laughed. “It was funny. I walked into the library one day, found him sittin’ on the couch an’ he looked up at me an’ he had tears just rollin’ down his cheeks! Him!”

“So did you!” he protested. “You were practically bawling!” 

“Yeah, but which one of us is the almighty Time Lord? Besides, that thing with Snape and Lily was just—”

“Oi! Shut up!” Martha put her hands over her ears. “Don’t. Say. Anything. I mean it! Not a word!”

“Sorry,” Rose apologized, but she didn’t look very sorry at all. 

Martha glowered at them for a moment then lowered her hands. “But…is it real, though? I mean—witches, black magic, and all that. It’s real?”

The Doctor made a face. “’Course it isn’t!” he said patronizingly. 

“Well how am I supposed to know? I only just started believing in time travel. Give me a break.”

“Looks like witchcraft, but it isn’t. Can’t be. Are you gonna stand there all night?”

“Sorry,” she muttered and walked over to the empty bed. She sat down, crossing her legs, and stared at the floor. 

“There’s such a thing as psychic energy, but a human couldn’t channel it like that. Not without a generator the size of Taunton, and I would’ve spotted that.”

“Just like a human child can’t harness ionic energy?” Rose asked. 

The Doctor’s eyes widened and he sat up, pulling her into a hug. “Oh! Rose Tyler, you are brilliant!”

She blinked and didn’t hug him back. “What, you think an Isolus is doing this?” That was not a comforting thought. She’d already dealt with one of those brats once and she did not fancy another round.

“No, no,” he assured her. “An Isolus couldn’t do this, but there are several alien species that could. They must be somewhere nearby…possibly possessing or controlling humans, or they just look human.”

“I know who it is,” Rose said softly.

The Doctor’s expression darkened. “About that, Rose—”

“Not now, Doctor, _please_.” She leaned forward, crossing her legs in front of her.

“Rose. Whatever caused Lynley to die, you shouldn’t have been able to feel it. _I_ couldn’t feel it, Martha couldn’t feel it—no one else could feel it.” He leaned around to look her right in the eyes. “Except you. And I think you know why, but you’re just not telling me.” 

Rose flinched. 

Martha was holding very still. She’d felt lost the moment they started talking about an ‘Isolus,’ whatever the hell that was, but now she felt like she was witnessing something private. There was something…off about Rose. It was her eyes that gave her away. As she’d stared down the Judoon, there had been something old and fearless within them. When she’d tried to reach the plasmavore, Martha was sure she’d seen yellow-gold glinting in their depths. She had no idea what it was–and evidently the Doctor didn’t either–but whatever it may be, it frightened her.

“Doctor. Just leave it alone for now,” Rose said after a moment, her voice hard. “And focus on what’s important. It’s that servant girl, the one who was in the room with Shakespeare earlier. She was at the Theatre, too, dressed like a proper noble lady. The whole place felt off an’ it only got worse when she arrived. I felt it again when I looked at her, only stronger. Like she was the source. Not long after she left the room, Lynley started…drowning.”

The Time Lord’s face was serious, his brow wrinkled and lips pressed firmly together. 

“Can you feel anything now?”

“No, ‘s all normal.”

He said nothing for a long minute. Rose didn’t speak and neither did Martha. He broke the silence with a heavy sigh and leaned backwards against the pillow. “There’s so many things it could be…if you’d tell me how you knew all this, it would help.” 

“I don’t know _how_ I know, I just do,” she evaded. 

He was not impressed. 

“Um…” Martha cleared her throat awkwardly. “If you want me to ask for another room so you two can talk, I can—”

“No,” Rose said quickly. “You can stay. We’ll talk _later_ , Doctor.” Her tone left no room for argument, and neither did the firm look she gave him as she crawled under the blanket. He looked mutinous, and though he didn’t press the issue, he didn’t get under the blankets, either. 

“Don’t you sleep?” Martha asked as she pulled the blanket over herself.

“Sometimes,” he said. “Not as much or as often as you humans, though.” 

“How do you mean?”

“I slept for a few hours before we picked you up,” he said. “I’ll be fine for another week or so, depending on how things go.”

“Mad.”

“Time Lord.”

Martha rolled her eyes. “Blow out that candle, will you, Rose?”

Rose propped herself up on her forearm and extinguished the candle, plunging the room into darkness except for the moonlight filtering through the windows. The three of them were silent and still for a moment as they all contemplated what had happened in the last twelve to twenty-four hours. Rose swallowed and lowered herself back down onto the pillow. A moment later, she felt the Doctor’s fingers ghost across her temple. She tensed, thinking for an awful moment that he was trying to read her mind and find out what she was hiding—he could do it if he wanted, she knew he could—but then she realized he was simply brushing a few locks of hair out of her face. She was glad he couldn’t see her face because it was burning with shame. He’d never do that to her and she felt horrible for thinking even for a second that he would. 

It took her about two minutes before she realized sleep wasn’t going to come any time soon, even with the soothing presence of the Doctor and his hand drifting through her hair. She hadn’t been awake more than a few hours and her mind was racing; wondering how much was changing inside her…and wondering how she would tell him. She was on borrowed time now. He’d wait until they were alone and in the TARDIS, if she was lucky; he’d wait until they were simply alone if she wasn’t. He might wait until Martha was unconscious, which made her want to fall asleep even more, but, of course, only served to keep her awake.

She felt the TARDIS nudge her comfortingly in the back of her mind and the tension in her body dissipated. She snuggled down into the lumpy mattress, enjoying the soothing sensation the ship caused. Then something occurred to her and Rose inhaled sharply. The way she felt the reassurance and the way she felt the wrongness of the witchcraft—they were the same. 

Whenever the TARDIS tried to sooth her, her heart rate would automatically slow and her muscles would relax in response to the ships presence in her mind. She thought it was just the witchcraft making her nauseous, but what if she was really feeling nauseous because of her body’s reaction to what the TARDIS was projecting?

_She_ wasn’t really sensing anything, it was their _ship_ that felt the disturbances of the witchcraft! But why could she feel it and not the Doctor? She knew she had a unique tie to the ship, but he was telepathic and he’d been with the TARDIS for so much longer than she had. Surely his bond was stronger. Shouldn’t he be the one feeling all this?

Unless…

“Rose,” the Doctor breathed in her ear. “What is it?”

She cursed inwardly.

“Your heart is racing,” he whispered. “Is something happening again?”

“No, but,” Rose swallowed. “Is Martha…?”

“She’s already asleep,” he assured her. “She’s had a longer day than you. You can tell me. Please, Rose—I need to know.”

She swallowed again and closed her eyes as a shiver raced through her body. She could stay silent, she could, and he’d let it go for the night. She could have more time to think, to prepare. To get him away from the poor medical student who shouldn’t have to see him properly angry and afraid so early on. 

“Rose,” he pleaded softly, moving his hand to her arm, and she gave in.

“Bad Wolf,” she breathed. 

She felt his entire body stiffen: every single muscle tensed at the name as his hand tightened on her arm. Rose pressed her face into the pillow and waited. Now he would become afraid…afraid and angry and rash. He’d haul her back to the TARDIS and demand things and run every test he could. Probably abandon Martha and go back for Donna to find out what she’d seen when Rose lost consciousness….

“What do you mean?” he asked, his voice level, but the hand gripping her arm betrayed his stress. 

“Bad Wolf. I think that’s how I know.”

“What do you mean? I took it out of you, Rose.”

“You got the Time Vortex out of my head but there’s still somethin’ linking me and the TARDIS together—and I mean more than just her being in there to translate and whatnot.”

“What makes you think that?” 

“Remember when you made Donna glow down in the lab? Well, I heard someone singing. Then later, when the Empress tried to pull all the particles out of Donna and Lance—well…I don’t know what happened, exactly. I saw this golden light leave their bodies, and then I just started hurting. It felt like…like I was burning. I heard the singing again, too, before I passed out.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “When I woke up on the TARDIS, Donna told me…she told me my eyes had glowed.”

“And why you didn’t tell me this then?” the Doctor asked through his teeth, struggling to keep his voice down. This was _not_ a conversation Martha needed to overhear. Suddenly her earlier offer to ask for a separate room sounded brilliant.

“I…I was…afraid.” She whispered, tears starting to leak out of her eyes. “I didn’t know what was happening…I was scared you’d be angry at me…and I just wanted to go off and have a good cry about my mum an’ I knew if I told you that you wouldn’t let me.” 

“Oh, Rose,” he murmured. “Turn over, would you?” She did so, carefully, and he was able to see the tears shining in her eyes. He put his hand on her cheek. “I’m sorry. I don’t want you to ever be afraid of me. Ever. But why, _why_ didn’t you tell me sooner? This could be bad, Rose, very bad. They’re _deadly_.”

“I know.”

“They could be killing you right now…” He faltered and shook his head. “I can’t…”

“I know,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. But it doesn’t hurt, really, only when she tried to take them out of me. I can’t hear the singing, either.”

“We need to get back to the TARDIS now. I need to see what happening inside you. If it really is huon particles, or at least something similar, then I’ll know how to look for them. Most scanners can’t detect them since they’re virtually obsolete, but I still have a few somewhere. We’ll wake Martha and—”

“We can’t. There’s something goin’ on here, Doctor. Something very, very bad. I can feel it. …I can _feel_ it…” she whispered, her eyes widening as her stomach clenched. “Happenin’, right now. Witchcraft, or whatever it is.” 

“Where?” he asked. “Can you tell?”

She shook her head. “No, but I think—an’ this is just an idea—but I reckon it’s something to do with Shakespeare. All of it’s happened around him.” She shuddered, pulling her knees up to her stomach. “And it’s somethin’ to do with that girl. It’s like…like she doesn’t belong…or shouldn’t exist. It feels so wrong and it makes me almost sick.” 

“What do you mean?” he asked.

Rose shook her head. “I don’t know. God, I just don’t know.” 

“I’ll go check on him,” he said, starting to pull away.

“No!” she gasped. She should let him go. She should, but whole body was shaking; her stomach was doing somersaults and she didn’t want to be alone. “Stay. Please?”

The Doctor stared down at her for a moment, then nodded and put his arms around her waist, pulling her close, and she buried her face in the familiar fabric of his suit. They remained this way for a few minutes, listening to the sounds of their hearts, as her stomach settled and the energy dispersed, and Rose was left with only memories to prove it had happened.

“It’s gone,” she murmured finally.

A scream of pure, unadulterated terror tore through the night air and The Doctor shot up like a bullet before the scream had even reached its peak. Rose was just a split second behind him, leaping out of the bed and flying towards the door. Startled awake, Martha looked around wildly in time to see the two of them race out of the room, and followed.

The Doctor practically flew down the hall towards Shakespeare’s room, his long legs propelling him, and Rose only barely managed to keep up without tripping over her nightgown. The Doctor hit the door to stop himself and Shakespeare jerked awake, somehow having slept through the sound of a terrified scream three feet from him. The source of the scream was lying flat on her back in front of the door.

“Dolly,” Rose gasped as the Doctor knelt down. One of the windows banged against the wall outside, the wind rushing in. Martha and Rose ran over to it, expecting to see someone trying to climb down. Instead they saw, silhouetted against the full moon, a cloaked figure flying off on a broom, cackling wickedly. The two of them exchanged a shocked look then stared at the retreating figure.

“Her heart gave out,” the Doctor reported behind them, disbelief coloring his tone. “She died of fright.” 

“Doctor,” Martha called. 

He sprang up, leaping around the desk to look out the window behind them. “What did you see?”

“A witch.”

The Doctor stared at her, open mouthed. 

Throughout the hours that followed, Rose Tyler didn’t utter a single word. 

Martha demanded the Doctor let her give Dolly a once over and finally agreed that, having found no other apparent causes, that Dolly Bailey had, indeed, died of fright. Shakespeare seemed stunned, demanding to know how he could have slept through her death, and the Doctor demanding the same thing of him. A constable was called to take her body away and a messenger was sent to locate Dolly’s brother so the inn could be dealt with. There was no sign of the servant girl, whom they learned was called Lilith. She’d simply vanished...or hopped on a broom and flew off into the night.

Martha suggested they go get dressed because it was clear no one was getting back to sleep. Rose only nodded, dressing and helping Martha with her bodice in silence, ignoring the other woman’s attempts to get her to talk. She didn’t touch her hair except to brush it out with a strangely shaped hairbrush that the Doctor produced from his pocket and watched in silence as Martha fixed the updo hers was in. 

At dawn they were seated in Shakespeare’s room around the table, waiting. The man himself was still talking to the constable downstairs. Rose had her broken arm on the table, her fingers idly tracing each name, her expression melancholy.

“Earlier,” Martha said quietly. “Those names on your cast, I couldn’t read some of them. Now I can. Why’s that?” She waited for a response, but Rose didn’t even glance at her, just continued tracing the names. 

But now the Doctor’s attention was on Rose. Having been busy with affairs regarding the murder, he hadn’t really had a moment to focus on the wellbeing of his companions, other than pausing to produce a hairbrush, but now he realized just how quiet she’d been. He hadn’t heard her say a word since they’d found Dolly’s body and that worried him. Rose was usually so animated and full of life, always waiting with a word or a laugh for any situation. Concern was merited when she was silent. 

“Rose,” he said softly, leaning close to her. “Are you alright?”

She stopped tracing names and sat there, still as a statue, barely breathing. 

“Rose.” He gently reached out, clasping her good hand in both of his and slowly, Rose looked up at him. She wasn’t crying, but her eyes were deep and filled with sadness. “Say something, please.”

“I killed her, Doctor,” she whispered hoarsely. 

“No,” he murmured.

“I did, though,” she said, her voice stronger, but still quiet. “You were gonna go look around, but I stopped you. If you had been there you could’ve saved her.” She gritted her teeth, self-loathing written on every inch of her face. “But I made you stay an’ now she’s dead because I’m a coward.”

“Rose Marion Tyler, you are not a coward,” the Doctor said firmly. “You are one of the bravest people I have ever met in all of time and space.” He put his hand on her cheek. “There’s not many that could stare into the eyestalk of a Dalek and live to tell the tale, never mind _change_ one like you did. Or stand up to a Sycoraxian general alone. Or order me to launch a missile right at them. Or,” he lowered his voice, “completely ignore Emergency Programme One, rip open the heart of the TARDIS, and journey back into a warzone just to save my life.” 

Rose ducked her head and said nothing.

Martha cleared her throat. “I hate to intrude—and mind you, it feels like that’s all I’m doing with you two—but Rose, I don’t think you should be beating yourself up like this.”

She looked up, eyebrows arched, waiting. 

“It’s just like my professors said, back when I started med school: You can’t save everyone. You just can’t. Some patients can be saved, but some are going to die—and you have to accept that. Sometimes it’ll be because of something you did or didn’t do, but you can’t second-guess yourself and bother with the _what ifs_ ; ’cause no matter how you feel about it, you can’t change anything, and there’s always gonna be someone else who’s still alive that you can save.”

Rose swallowed and stared at the medical student: while she was older than her physically, Martha Jones was younger in so many ways; but still Rose realized why the Doctor had accepted her. He had a way of seeing that spark in people even when no one else did and it took being around him to bring it out. Well, it was out now, and Martha was starting to shine, understanding on her own something that was fundamental to their lifestyle, even though it was cruel.

“Martha,” she said slowly. “I think you’re gonna be a great companion.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking.” The Doctor said with a sort of paternal pride, like a father watching his daughter riding her bike without training wheels for the first time.

It was Martha’s turn to duck her head, embarrassed by what felt like high praise. It really wasn’t that big of a deal, was it? It was just the bare truth of things. Rose had needed a reminder. She wasn’t smiling yet, but the self-hatred had faded and her sadness wasn’t as profound. It would do for now.

Rose held up the cast. “Not all of these are in English,” she answered Martha’s earlier question. “In fact, most of them aren’t. I’ve been gettin’ signatures every time I’ve had to wear one of these. Like a bunch of souvenirs. Oh, I should get Shakespeare to sign…”

“Shakespeare’s autograph. That’d be worth a mint,” Martha said conspiratorially.

“Don’t get a brain door,” Rose chastised, almost smiling. 

“Alright, what is all this about a ‘brain door’? You’re going to have to explain that to me if you—”

“Later,” the Doctor held up his hand to quiet them, watching the door. 

Shakespeare entered, his head down, and he seemed to have aged years in the span of a few hours. He crossed to the window, staring out at the dawn, and the room waited in silence. The weight of Dolly’s death pressed down on them all again. Rose’s mild amusement faded and she returned to tracing the names on her cast. The Doctor put his face in his hands and Martha sat there, feeling oddly small. Finally, William sighed and turned from the window.

“Oh, sweet Dolly Bailey. She sat out three bouts of the plague in this place. We all ran like rats.” He sat down at his desk. “But what could have scared her so? She had such enormous spirit.”

“‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light,’” the Doctor quoted. 

“I might use that.”

“You can’t. It’s someone else’s.”

“I’ll tell you what it was,” Rose spoke up. “It was Lilith, that servant.”

“Come now, Dame Rose. Lilith has been here for near as long as I have and in all this time, she has never struck me as anything but a harmless young maid. No mere girl could’ve frightened Dolly to death.”

“An’ you’re probably right, but Lilith wasn’t a mere girl. I've been feelin’ all weird ever since we first set foot in the Globe and that’s when it all began. That’s when I first saw Lilith an’ you, and I saw her again here with you. It’s you, Shakespeare. It’s all to do with you. Whatever she’s doing, it’s because of you. She’s a witch.”

“Even if you are right—and I’m not saying you are—what would a witch want with _me_?” Shakespeare asked.

“Well, you’re a genius,” the Doctor said. “One of the best there ever was. That’s something.”

“But...for God’s sake man, I can understand other writers or poets wanting me for something, but _witches_? It’s absurd!”

“Think what you want, Mr. Shakespeare, but I saw a witch; we both did.” Martha added, gesturing between herself and Rose. “Big as you like, flying, cackling away, and you’ve written about witches.”

“I have?” Shakespeare frowned. “When was that?”

“Not, not quite yet,” the Doctor said quietly to Martha, who mentally slapped herself.

“It doesn’t matter why they want you,” she said. “They just do.”

“Actually, it does matter,” the Doctor corrected. “Discovering the motive is half the victory. With someone’s motive you can understand why they do the things they do. And if we find out what they want and why, I may be able to figure out what they are. Because right now, I haven’t the foggiest.”

“You don’t even have an idea?” Rose asked, startled. 

“No,” he shook his head. “I’ve got about three thousand ideas and not enough time to test them all. I’m missing something important.” He put his hands in his hair. “If I could just figure it out…”

“Peter Streete spoke of witches,” Shakespeare said suddenly.

“Who’s Peter Streete?” Martha asked. 

“Our builder. He sketched the plans to the Globe.”

The Doctor sat straight up. “The architect,” he murmured. “Rose, didn’t you say the—oh! Oh yes! The architect!” He slammed his fist on the table. “The Globe!” 

He grabbed his coat and rushed out the door. Martha and Shakespeare looked at each other incredulously, neither of them used to the Doctor when he got like this—but thankfully Rose was, and she grabbed Martha’s arm and hauled her out of her chair. “Come on or he’ll leave us behind!” 

Shakespeare grabbed the script and followed them.

Ahead of them, the Doctor was yelling, “The Globe might be the key! Come on!” He loped across the landing, down the stairs, out of the Inn, and headed for the Globe Theatre. Martha, Rose, and Shakespeare could do nothing but try and keep up, throwing apologies to the people that had nearly been trampled by the Time Lord in his mad dash.

“Rose,” Shakespeare puffed, “I do believe your man may be a bit mad.”

“Oh, he is,” she replied. “Just go with it, ‘s all you can do.”

When they arrived at the Globe, the Doctor was already pacing around in the pit where the audience could stand, counting and muttering to himself, but his mania had calmed. Rose watched him for a moment, and then mounted the stage and sat down on the edge, her legs dangling over the front of it, leaning on her good hand to wait. Taking their cues from her, Martha and William waited on the stage, out of the Doctor’s way, but close enough to offer input when it was needed.

Martha sat down next to Rose, noting the patience on her face as she watched the brainstorming Time Lord pace. This must be a common occurrence. She wondered how it must have been for Rose when she first joined the Doctor. Had she had someone else to take her cues from or had she been on her own trying to work out the way he worked?

“I’ve always wondered but I never asked…” the Doctor said loudly enough that it got their attention. “Tell me, Will, why fourteen sides?”

“It was the shape Peter Streete thought best, that’s all.” He explained. “Said it carried the sound well.”

“Why does that ring a bell? Fourteen…” 

“There’s fourteen lines in a sonnet,” Martha suggested. 

“So there is. Good point,” the Doctor nodded and resumed pacing. “Words and shapes following the same design. Fourteen lines, fourteen sides, fourteen facets…Oh, my head. Tetradecagon… Think, think, think!” He hit his head along with each word. “Words, letters, numbers, lines!”

“This is just a theatre!” Shakespeare said, unable to see why the Doctor was making such a fuss about the building.

“Oh, but a theatre’s magic, isn’t it? You should know.” He walked over to the stage, putting his arms in the space between Rose and Martha, and looked up at them. “Stand on this stage, say the right words with the right emphasis at the right time…Oh, you can make men weep, or cry with joy, change them.” His eyes widened as something dawned on him. “You can change people’s minds just with words in this place… And if you exaggerate that…” he looked at Rose. “You said this place feels funny?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Something about it’s just wrong. But it’s sort of quiet, more like an undercurrent right now. It was like this last night, too, ‘til Lilith showed up; then it got worse. Their magic, it’s in the whole place…” she trailed off, looking up at the box where Lilith had sat the night beforehand. 

“It’s like the TARDIS,” Martha said. “Small wooden box with all that power inside.” She gestured with her hands.

The Doctor grinned. “Oh, Martha Jones, I like you. Absolutely brilliant, you are, both of you. Tell you what, though. Peter Streete would know. Can I talk to him?”

“You won’t get an answer. A month after finishing this place—” Shakespeare gestured around them. “Lost his mind.” 

“Why?” Martha asked. “What happened?”

“Started raving about witches, hearing voices, babbling. His mind was addled.”

“Where is he now?” the Doctor asked. 

“Bedlam,” Shakespeare said grimly.

Martha didn’t like the sound of that. “What’s Bedlam?”

“Bethlem Hospital. The madhouse.”

“We’re gonna go there. Right now. Come on.” 

His two companions exchanged glances then slid down from the stage and followed him towards the exit. Shakespeare announced he was coming, pausing to hand over the script to one of his arriving actors to be copied and memorized by tonight, then followed the three mysterious travelers out.

Rose noted with ire, however, that he didn’t seem to be taking things too seriously. Or at least not as seriously as he should have been. If the man was smart enough to make the deep observations he had last night within a few minutes, surely he could see that she and the Doctor were not joking about this? But what did she know about the way the minds of geniuses worked? Well, _human_ geniuses, anyway. For all she knew they were all as scatterbrained as the Doctor, hopping from one subject to the next and hiding their fear behind humor and/or flirting. 

If he was afraid, then Shakespeare had chosen both. “So, tell me of Freedonia, where women can be doctors, writers, actors.” 

“This country’s ruled by a woman,” Martha pointed out.

“Ah, she’s royal. That’s God’s business. Though you are a royal beauty.”

Martha stopped walking and laughed, holding up her hand. “Whoa, Nelly! I know for a fact you’ve got a wife in the country.”

“But Martha, this is Town,” he argued smoothly. 

With a laugh, Rose stopped, turning on her heel, and put her hands on her hips. Sometimes it seemed like the Doctor shared that mindset. Not that she was his wife or anything, but he’d seemed ready to forget her existence when presented with a pretty French aristocrat with a big skirt and bigger—

“Come on!” the Doctor called impatiently from behind her. “We can all have a good flirt later!”

“Is that a promise, Doctor?” William Shakespeare looked the Time Lord up and down.

The Doctor inhaled slowly. “Oooh…fifty-seven academics just punched the air,” he murmured. “Now, move!” 

A few minutes later, Rose suddenly stumbled, her momentum sending her careening into a passing merchant who shouted a curse as they both toppled to the ground. 

“Rose!” Martha cried and the Doctor’s body went rigid and he turned mid-stride, loping back to them. The Doctor was by Rose’s side almost instantly, grasping her arms and helping her to her feet before the merchant could offer. 

She looked up, her eyes wide and afraid, and Martha could see she was shaking.

“What is it?” he demanded quietly and there was something in his expression, something dark and ancient and possessive that caused Martha to take an automatic step back. 

“Something’s happening,” she gasped, her shoulders hunched and her arms crossed across her stomach. “Feels like the Globe, only worse…Oh, God,” she moaned, clutching at her chest like she was in pain.

“Should we go back?” Martha asked.

“I should. Ralph, Dick, and Kempe are there now, possibly others.” Shakespeare said worriedly. “If something’s amiss, I—”

“No,” Rose said suddenly, lowering her hands. She straightened up and swallowed. “It’s gone. Whatever was happening, it’s over. It didn’t feel the same as the other times. It felt like something was ripping or…or tearing…”

“I should return.” Shakespeare turned to go. 

“No,” the Doctor barked, his gaze never leaving Rose. “We’re almost to Bedlam now and, hopefully, the truth. Going back won’t do any good—especially since you have no way of explaining how you knew something was wrong.”

“Actually, I do.” 

“No,” the Doctor growled. “You tell anyone about what Rose is detecting then they’ll assume she’s a witch herself.”

“And how do you know she’s not?” he challenged, taking a step towards them. “How do you know like is not sensing like? Because that’s exactly what it appears to be. I know she’s your wife, Sir Doctor, but there are some things—”

The Doctor’s head snapped up, his expression darker and colder than the deepest reaches of space, and Shakespeare’s voice died in his throat. 

“Rose Tyler is many, many things—but she is not a witch.” He said coldly, silently daring the man to challenge him. 

This was not the first time she’d been accused of witchery, nor would it be the last, but the Doctor would let the entire city burn before he’d let them burn her. 

Timelines be damned.


	9. The Three Witches

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Harpier cries: 'tis time! 'tis time!  
> Round about the caldron go;  
> In the poison'd entrails throw.  
> Toad, that under cold stone,  
> Days and nights has thirty-one;  
> Swelter'd venom sleeping got,  
> Boil thou first i' the charmed pot!" - Macbeth, Act 4 Scene 1

Even though he had apologized for suggesting it and admitted his fear of the strange events, Rose couldn’t quite bring herself to look Shakespeare in the eye anymore. 

The Doctor had calmed down, though he kept a wary eye on the Bard, as if expecting him to tear off and rouse a mob. And he could do it, the wordsmith, stirring up a mob with just a few well-chosen words. And then they’d have to fight their way back to the TARDIS and Lilith would be left with a clear path to whatever it is she was after.

Though Shakespeare seemed eager to prove himself loyal, using his way with words to get them access to Peter Street before the Doctor even had a chance to whip out the psychic paper.

A portly jailer led them through the stinking halls of Bedlam. Men and women alike gazed at them through the bars, some reaching out, shaking the bars of their cages, while others simply sat and stared; some begged and pleaded; some just screamed wordlessly. The smell of hundreds of unwashed bodies, bodily waste, illness, and decay mixed together to create a rotting odor that made the Doctor’s hypersensitive nose wrinkle in revulsion.

Martha was completely and utterly disgusted, the doctor within her screaming in protest. These people were sick. They needed _help_ ; they needed care and medicine; they needed people willing to fight the madness to save them. They didn’t need to be chucked into cells and left to rot. And as much as she had always abhorred those so-called “mercy killings,” she realized that here and now for these people, death would be a mercy.

“Does my lord Doctor wish some entertainment while he waits?” The jailer inquired. “I’ll whip these madmen. They’ll put on a good show for ya! Bandog and Bedlam!”

“No, I don’t,” the Doctor said in disgust.

“This is sick!” Rose told the jailer vehemently. “And you’re sick for thinkin’ it’s funny!”

The man looked a bit uncomfortable. “My apologies, ma’am. Uh, wait here, my lords, while I…make him decent for the ladies.”

He walked off to prepare Peter—whatever that meant,—and Rose rounded on Shakespeare, looking him right in the eyes. “You call this a hospital? This is a _dungeon_! It’s sick!”

“She’s right. What kind of hospital whips its patients to entertain the gentry?” Martha was utterly repulsed. “And you put your friend in here?”

“Oh, and it’s all so different in Freedonia,” he retorted.

“Actually, yeah,” Rose snapped. “It is.”

“Do you really think this place does any good?” Martha demanded.

“I’ve been mad. I’ve lost my mind,” Shakespeare told her. “Fear of this place set me right again. It serves its purpose.”

“Mad in what way?”

“You lost your son,” the Doctor murmured. 

“My only boy,” Shakespeare said. “The Black Death took him. I wasn’t even there.”

“I didn’t know. I’m sorry,” Martha apologized.

“It made me question everything.” He went on as if he hadn’t heard her. Maybe he hadn’t. ‘The futility of this fleeting existence. To be or not to be… Oh,” he put his hand near his chin. “That’s quite good.”

“You should write that down,” the Doctor suggested.

“Hmm, maybe not. A bit pretentious?”

The Doctor shrugged.

“This way, m’lord!” the jailor called, and they were off again. He unlocked the cell for them. They filed in solemnly, gazing at the cell’s single occupant, a skinny man with dirty hair shaking on the cot in the middle of the cell. “They can be a bit dangerous, m’lord. Don’t know their own strength,” he cautioned.

“I think it helps if you don’t whip them!” the Doctor snapped. “Now get out.” 

If the phrase existed in this time, Rose thought the jailor would probably have said _well, excuse me!_ ‘Different cultures, different customs,’ she knew. As far as he was concerned, beating the madmen was acceptable. That still didn’t stop her from wanting to give him a taste of his own medicine, but she restrained herself. They needed to hear Peter’s story and they couldn’t do that if she got them thrown out. He closed the door behind them, locked it, and went on his way.

The Doctor was slowly approaching the man on the floor. “Peter?” he called softly.

Martha and Shakespeare started to follow him, but Rose shook her head, motioning for them to keep back. Peter was…well, he wasn’t…he wasn’t wrong like Lilith, but he wasn’t _right_ like a normal human, either.

What are you trying to tell me? she thought, but the TARDIS didn’t respond. Not even a flicker of emotion.

“Peter Street?”

“He’s the same as he was,” Shakespeare muttered. “You’ll get nothing out of him.”

The Doctor knelt down in front of Peter, his expression gentle and sympathetic. Rose knew what was coming; she’d seen it happen before. She didn’t know exactly how it worked, but he’d told her once that telepathy was potentially a two-way street. What if Peter somehow got into the Doctor’s mind?

“Doctor,” she murmured. “Doctor, don’t.”

The Doctor glanced over Peter’s head at her, arching his eyebrow. 

“He’s not…right,” she tried to explain, gritting her teeth in frustration when she couldn’t come up with anything better. But the Doctor understood and nodded once.

“We’re in the madhouse, Miss Rose,” Shakespeare said impatiently. “No one here is right.”

“Peter,” the Doctor said again, putting his hand on the man’s shoulder, and Peter’s head snapped up. He shook, his mouth moving like he wanted to speak, but something was stopping him.

Rose stiffened. It was happening again. This time it was Peter Street making the hairs on the back of her neck stick straight up and causing her stomach to flutter uneasily. Not all unlike the way Lilith had felt, yet completely different. He wasn’t radiating it like she had. She forced herself not to react, not to let her discomfort show. Peter needed the Doctors undivided attention.

The Time Lord put his hands on either side of Peter’s face. “Peter, I’m the Doctor. Go into the past, one year ago.” His voice was low and hypnotic; it gave Rose shivers. “Let your mind go back, back to when everything was fine and shining. Everything that happened in this year since happened to somebody else. It was just a story. A winter’s tale. Let go. Listen. That’s it; just let go.” Peter’s body slumped and the Doctor eased Peter down onto the cot. 

The man gasped, swallowing, and trembled. The Doctor stood over him, powerful and commanding. 

“What’s he doing?” Martha whispered. 

“It’s…kind of like hypnosis,” Rose explained softly. She half-expected Peter to start speaking in a raspy voice about being alone. If only. 

“Tell me the story, Peter.” The Time Lord commanded. “Tell me about the witches.”

Peter twitched and spoke slowly, haltingly. “Witches…spoke to Peter… In the night, they whispered. They whispered.” He raised his hand, his fingers wiggling and twitching near his ear, breathing quickly. When he spoke again, his voice was louder, firmer. “Got Peter to build the Globe to their design. _Their_ design.”

The Doctor glanced up at Rose for a moment.

“The fourteen walls,” he chuckled. “Always fourteen. When the work was done…” he laughed again, “they—they snapped poor Peter’s wits.”

“But where did Peter see the witches?” The Doctor asked. “Where in the city?” 

Peter panted, swallowing with great difficulty, as if he wanted to say the word but couldn’t.

“Peter,” the Doctor crouched down, his voice gruff and intense. “Tell me. You’ve got to tell me. Where were they?”

Rose felt it building, the energy growing, and she sucked in a sharp breath between her teeth as the feeling of nausea rolled through her like a tidal wave.

Peter sucked in a breath through his teeth and with a great effort he told them. 

“All Hallows Street.”

Rose blinked. There was nothing behind the Doctor when her eyes had closed, but when they opened an ugly green-skinned hag with a long chin and nose and scraggly brown hair was in the spot that had been empty not a second before. She gasped just as the creature opened its mouth.

“Too many words,” it said.

The Doctor whipped around, seeing the hag and immediately backing away from it and Peter. “What the hell!” Martha exclaimed. 

Now Rose really felt sick to her stomach. The _thing_ before them was hideous and wrong; so, so wrong. The TARDIS knew it and so did she.

“Just one touch of the heart.” The hag declared, lifting her finger, and lowering it to Peter’s chest.

“NO!” the Doctor shouted. 

Rose choked, doubling over. The witch inhaled loudly as Peter screamed his final cry and died. The witch moaned.

“Witch!” Shakespeare pointed. “I’m seeing a witch!” 

“Yeah, you are,” Rose spat out, raising her head. “And she _shouldn’t exist_!”

“Oh, dear, I should. I think it is you who will not exist much longer!” The witch pointed her finger at Rose. “Would you like to be first? Just one touch…oh, oh, I’ll stop your frantic heart. Poor, fragile mortals.”

“LET US OUT!” Martha backed away to the bars, turning to shake him. “LET US OUT!”

“That’s not gonna work. The whole building’s shouting that.” The Doctor told her. 

Martha turned away from the bars, gasping and seconds from crying. 

“So who will die first, hmm?” the witch asked. “Perhaps the fair child? She seems to be in pain. Or perhaps the dark child who seems so distressed?”

“Well, if you’re looking for volunteers.” The Doctor walked towards the witch, placing himself between her and Rose.

“Doctor!” 

“No! Don’t!”

“Doctor, can you stop her?” Shakespeare queried. 

“No mortal has power over me!” The hag declared.

“Oh, but there’s power in words.” The Doctor growled and her confidence dimmed a bit. “If I can find the right one—If I can just know you.”

“None on Earth have knowledge of us.” She hissed, pointing at him. 

“Then it’s a good thing I’m here.” He leaned away from her probing finger. “Then it’s a good thing I’m here. Now: think, think, think... Humanoid female, uses shapes and words to channel energy…”

“Should exist!” Rose snarled. 

The hag called Doomfinger looked at the blonde girl—the one that Lilith was concerned about. She was not one of their sisters gone rogue, yet she could sense their work and warn others of it. She was something new, something unique. Her eyes were feral and dangerous and they seemed to gleam yellow as she glared.

“AH!” The Doctor yelled. THAT’S IT! You _shouldn’t_ exist; not anymore! And fourteen makes sense now! The fourteen stars of the Rexel planetary configuration! Creature, I name you… _Carrionite_!” 

The witch’s eyes flipped wide. She screamed as she was enveloped in a bright light and vanished as quickly as she’d come. Rose breathed deeply as the feelings plaguing her disappeared along with the alien…witch…whatever. The Doctor stepped back, grinning viciously.

“What did you do?” Martha whispered. 

“I named her. The power of a name—that’s old magic.”

Martha shook her head. “But…there’s no such thing as magic. You said so.”

“Well, it's just a different sort of science,” the Doctor explained. “You lot, you chose mathematics. Given the right string of numbers, the right equation, you can split the atom. The Carrionites use words instead.”

“Use them for what?" Shakespeare demanded. 

The Doctor swallowed and looked at the spot where the witch had vanished. “The end of the world.”

There was silence in the cell, broken only by the loud wailing of a man in the distance as he felt the sting of a whip. Martha's exhaled sharply, wondering how the Doctor could sound so calm even though he practically radiated tension. 

Beside her Rose snorted a laugh. “Again?”

“Rose, this is hardly the time for laughing.” Shakespeare reprimanded. “If what he says is true, then this is a very serious matter.”

“Yeah, I know it’s serious, but _the end of the world_? It happened with me, Jack, Mickey, and now Martha. Doctor, have you ever had a companion who didn't end up facing the end of the world on their first go?”

The Doctor opened and closed his mouth. “Ah…uh…well…” He made a face. “Yeah, of course I have.”

“Guess we’re just lucky then,” Martha muttered.

A few hours later back at the Elephant Inn, Shakespeare was preparing for the performance that evening while Rose and Martha lounged against the desk and shelf respectively. The Doctor paced, despite Martha admonishing that he’d wear a hole in the floor, and finally explained what the hell Carrionites were and why it had taken him so long to realize what they were up against.

“The Carrionites disappeared way back at the dawn of the universe.” He explained, running his hand through his hair. “Nobody was sure if they were real or legend.”

“Well, I’m going for real.” Shakespeare retorted. 

“And it partially explains why you can feel them, Rose.” He stopped in front of her. “Or rather why the Old Girl can. Carrionite powers are obsolete. She’s old, but she was grown long after their banishment. She doesn’t recognize them and this planet isn’t used to them. Their magic must create odd readings to her scanners every time and it’s not often we encounter something that she has no knowledge on. That’s what you’re feeling this way. But…but _how_? How can you feel it when I don’t?”

“Maybe that’s also to do with Bad—” Rose began to suggest, stopping at the look on the Doctor’s face.)

“Never mind that now!” Martha interrupted. “What do the Carrionites want?” 

A muscle in his jaw twitched and he leaned against the desk with Rose. “A new empire on Earth, I’d say. A world of…bones and blood and witchcraft.”

“But how?”

He turned his head. “I’m looking at the man with the words.”

Shakespeare lowered the towel from his face. “Me? But I’ve done nothing.”

“Are you sure about that?” Rose asked quietly. “Because every time I’ve felt something it’s been connected to you. You or the Globe and its your theatre. ‘S all about you, Shakespeare—an’ don’t let that get to your head.” 

Shakespeare shook his head. “But…I don’t…I haven’t…”

“Rose, you felt something last night, yeah? Will, what were you doing last night before Dolly died?” Martha asked.

“Finishing the play.” He replied, desperate to prove he hadn’t been doing anything odd.

The Doctor raised his head. “What happens on the last page?” 

“The boys get the girls. They have a bit of a dance. It’s all as funny and thought provoking as usual.” He looked up, eyes wide as something occurred to him. “Except those last few lines. Funny thing is… I don’t actually remember writing them.”

“That’s it,” the Doctor realized, walking slowly towards him. “They used you. That’s what Rose felt. They gave you the final words. Like a spell, like a code. _Love’s Labours Won_ —it’s a weapon! The right combination of words,” he held up his hand, his fingers curled like he was holding a ball, “spoken at the right place with the shape of the Globe as an energy converter! The play’s the thing! And yes,” he added, “You can have that.”

“Alright.” Rose stood up. “So we know who, how, and why. Now what do we do?”

“We find them and we stop the play. All Hallows Street… Anyone know where that is?” They shook their heads. “Figures. Will, have you got any street maps in here?” 

“Ah… Yes!” He walked over to the shelf and pulled open a drawer. Martha moved out of the way as he rummaged through the contents and pulled out a stack of papers. “Should be in here, somewhere.” He set them on the desk and the Doctor whipped out his glasses, stepping around the desk to look.

William Shakespeare stepped away from the desk, folding his arms. He looked at Rose and nodded to her hand. “I’ve been meaning to ask. What is that?”

She held up her arm. “What, this? It’s a brace. I broke my arm not too long ago. This helps it heal.”

“And the writings on it? So strange…what languages are they?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Oh, I think I might. After today, I think I might just believe anything.”

Rose smiled. “Feelin’ inspired?”

“A bit.”

“Oh, by the way, do you think you could sign it?” she asked. “That’s what these writings are: people’s names.”

“Um, why?”

“It’s a hobby. Hey, Doctor, can I have the marker pen?” 

He didn’t even pause his search. “Rose, we’re in the middle of saving the world.”

“Oh, right. Later then.”

The Doctor cried out triumphantly. “Ah! Here we go… now where… All Hallows Street! There it is. Martha, Rose, we’ll track them down. Will, you get to the Globe. Whatever you do, stop that play.”

“I’ll do it,” Shakespeare said, reaching to shake the Doctor’s hand. “All these years, I’ve been the cleverest man around. Next to you, I know nothing.”

“Oh, God, don’t tell him that. His ego’s big enough.” Rose groaned. 

“But it’s marvelous! Good luck, Doctor.”

“Good luck, Shakespeare.” He replied, running around the desk and grabbing his coat. “Once more unto the breach!” 

“I like that!” Shakespeare said as the three of them hurried out of the move. And then he realized, “Wait a minute. That’s one of mine!”

The Doctor leaned around the doorframe. “Oh, just shift!” 

It didn’t take long for them to reach All Hallows Street. Martha was starting to get used to the running, lucky for her. Rose was likewise becoming accustomed to her own problem, though that didn’t make it bother her any less. There was a brief flash, a small, swift bit of Carrionite magic that lasted little more than a tick, and it only made her stride falter. But the closer they got to All Hallows, the more the air thickened with their energy. 

The Doctor announced when they arrived at the proper street. It felt like the exterior of the Globe to Rose, full of residual energy that came from being exposed to the Carrionite’s powers for an extended period of time. Rose closed her eyes, focusing on the sensations she was feeling, trying to pinpoint where the readings that were bugging the TARDIS were originating from.

Meanwhile, Martha voiced something that had been nagging at her for a few hours. “The world didn’t end in 1599. It just didn’t. Look at me—I’m living proof.”

“Oh, how to explain the mechanics of infinite temporal flux?” he murmured. “Oh, I know! _Back to the Future_. It’s like _Back to the Future_.”

“The film?”

“No, the novelization. Yes, the film! Marty McFly goes back and changes history.”

“And he starts fading away. …Oh my God, am I gonna fade?”

“You and the entire future of the human race. It ends right now unless—”

“That house,” Rose said suddenly, opening her eyes. She lifted her arm and pointed to the one directly in front of them. As if on cue, the door slowly opened. “Okay, that was spooky.” 

“Neat trick,” the Doctor joked, holding out his hand for her to take, wiggling his fingers. “You’ll have to teach me sometime. Could do for opening the TARDIS quickly during a chase.”

She shot him a look but slid her hand into his. The three of them proceeded carefully into the house and Rose, feeling like a mouse walking towards a cat, gripped his hand tightly and her nails dug into the material of her brace. She looked up at the ceiling. “She’s up there.”

They found the stairs near the back of the house and climbed to the upper floor. She could practically smell their magic now, and that wasn’t the only thing that smelled. The Doctor pushed a curtain aside and they entered the room. The shelves and walls were lined and stacked with all manner of plants, candles, masks, beads, dead animals, and other things she couldn’t even name. A black cauldron (God, could it get any more cliché?) sat bubbling near the middle of the room—and Lilith, cloaked in black, stood beside it, waiting. Gone was the meek servant girl and in her place was a leering, confident woman.

“I take it we’re expected,” the Doctor deduced. 

“Oh, I think death has been waiting for you for a long time.” Lilith said, looking up and down.

“Right then,” Martha tapped the Doctor’s chest with the back of her hand. “It’s my turn.” She swaggered forward, confident in her ability to deal with Lilith. “I know how to do this.” She pointed straight at her heart. “I name thee…Carrionite!” 

Lilith gasped, seemingly shocked, but it faded almost immediately, replaced by a smug giggle. 

“What did I do wrong?” Martha asked the Doctor. “Was it the finger?”

“The power of a name works only once,” Lilith explained. “Observe.” 

She lifted her finger and pointed it directly at Martha’s chest. “I gaze upon this bag of bones and now I name thee Martha Jones!”

Martha gasped, her eyes rolling back into her head, and her legs gave out. The Doctor tried to catch her, but only managed to ease her fall to the floor. “What have you done?!” he demanded. 

Lilith looked at her finger. “Hmm. Only sleeping, alas. It’s curious. The name has less impact. She’s somehow out of her time.” She frowned for a moment, completely stumped, then dropped forward, pointing at him. “As for you, Sir Doctor—” she stopped, a curious look crossing her face. “Fascinating. There is no name. Why would a man hide his title in such despair? …But there is still one with a name that can cause you pain.” 

“Don’t you _dare_!”

She looked at Rose. “Your fragile life draws to a close as I name thee Dame Rose!” 

“NO!” the Doctor shouted. 

It felt like something slamming into her with the force of a moving truck and stabbing her with a thousand knives all at once. The TARDIS cried out in alarm. She fell back, gasping and clutching at her front, but she didn’t lose consciousness. The Doctor caught her, holding her close, and glared at the Carrionite with all the fury of The Oncoming Storm. 

Lilith herself was looking between Rose and her finger in bewilderment. “Impossible!”

“I am gettin’ really sick of all this bloody magic!” Rose hissed through the pain. 

Lilith’s lip curled and she peered at Rose closely. “Ah…” She said after a moment. “You have two names. But your other name is scattered throughout all of time and space…two words…a message and a warning…you are the Bad—”

“Do you know _why_ I’m called that?” Rose interrupted, pushing herself to her feet, but the Doctor kept her firmly in his embrace. “You name me, and you might jus’ find out.”

Lilith’s teeth were bared in frustration. “Or I may kill you.”

Rose could hear the singing in her mind, quiet but definitely there—the TARDIS waiting to defend her humans and her Time Lord with the best weapon they had. Her eyes were dangerous and ancient, almost shining golden in the light. She arched one eyebrow, daring Lilith to try. 

The Carrionite took a step away from them—a man with no name, a girl with _the_ name. Whatever they were, they were dangerous and they needed to be disposed of—but carefully, carefully. “Very well, _Rose Tyler_ , I will spare you.” 

“Leave her alone,” the Doctor growled, stepping towards her. “Your people vanished eons ago. Where did you go?”

Lilith spun around, returning to her original spot beside the bubbling cauldron. “The Eternals found the right word to banish us into deep darkness.”

“And how did you escape?”

“New words—new and glittering,” she practically purred. “From a mind like no other.”

“Shakespeare.”

She nodded once. Her eyes flicked down to the cauldron where an image of Shakespeare grieving was visible in the blue liquid. “The grief of a genius—grief without measure—madness enough to allow us entrance.”

“How many of you?”

“Just the three,” she said, walking towards the window. She turned again. “Then the human race will be purged, as pestilence. And from this world, we will lead the universe back into the old ways of blood and magic.”

“Hmm.” He walked towards her, scratching at his sideburn. Rose followed, her eyes still glinting dangerously. “Busy schedule. But first…you have to get past me.”

“Oh, that should be a pleasure,” she purred seductively at him, lifting her hand to trace one side of his face. The Doctor didn’t even flinch. “Considering my enemy has such a…handsome shape.” 

“Now, that’s one form of magic that’s definitely not gonna work on me,” the Doctor warned her.

“And you can back off now, you slag.” Rose reached forward, grabbing Lilith’s hand that was holding a pair of small scissors near his hair and dug her nails in the skin. Lilith hissed sharply, jerking away.

The Doctor wisely stepped back but Rose had had enough. She lifted her hand, pointing at the Carrionite. “We already used up ‘Carrionite,’ but what about _your_ name? I heard it earlier. I name you Lilith!”

Lilith’s face showed shock before she cried out in pain, her form glowing more vibrantly than the other witch’s had as she disappeared, and her scream faded away into nothing. 

Rose’s jaw was clenched as she lowered her hand. She glared at the spot where Lilith had vanished. “Did I kill her?”

“No, I don’t think so,” he murmured. “You probably just banished her to somewhere else in this world. She’ll be back, though.”

Then she rounded on the Doctor. “What were you thinkin’, lettin’ her get that close? You’re completely hopeless, I swear!”

The Doctor looked sheepish. “Sorry?” 

“You better be,” she growled. 

On the ground where she’d fallen, Martha stirred. They rushed to her side as she moaned, holding her head, and sat up. “Oh, _blimey_. Did anyone get the number of that bus? What’d I miss? Where’d she go?”

“I named her,” Rose explained.

“What? Hey, how come it worked for you an’ not me?”

“I used her real name, not her species.”

“Oh. Well then.” Martha grunted once as she pushed herself to her feet and straightened her skirt. “I feel like an idiot.”

“Oh, don’t worry, you’re still a novice.” The Doctor smiled at her before smacking his forehead. “World could be ending any second now and we’re having a chat! Come on! The Globe!” He grabbed Rose’s hand, and the three of them were off again into the night.

Not even two minutes after they left the house, Rose cried out, her face screwing up in pain. The Doctor caught her as she fell. Ahead of them, people were starting to scream in terror and there was a sound like thunder and rushing wind. He looked up, torn. 

There was a hole between realities not two miles away. If Carrionite power had been uncomfortable, this was absolutely excruciating. It was like someone was cutting her open inch by inch, pulling skin from muscle and muscle from bone to reach her heart, and all the while her stomach was doing somersaults and cartwheels and backflips. If he saw how much it hurt then he would never leave her and he had to go, he had to stop this.

“We’re too late!” Rose gasped. “The portal’s open—oh, God. I _can’t_ …” 

Her face twisted again. She only managed to turn away from him before she threw up. Coughing and gagging, she emptied the contents of her stomach onto the street. The Doctor rubbed her back soothingly, his attention solely on her for the moment. Pain stabbed at her and she heaved again. Coughing, tears leaking down her face, she reached up to wipe her mouth. 

“Can you walk?” he asked urgently.

She shook her head immediately. “No. I-I can’t. You’ve gotta—agh!” She let out another cry of pain. “Just—just go, Doctor. You’ve gotta stop this!”

“Hang on,” he said. “I can carry you.”

She shook her head, forcing her eyes open. “I can’t…get any closer,” she panted, “or I swear I’m gonna black out, or worse. You gotta— _ah_ —take Martha and g-go! No, don’t argue!” she snapped, sucking in a sharp breath through her teeth. “Last time you stayed for me, Dolly died. If you don’t go, then everyone dies. GO!” 

The Doctor swallowed, his hands tightening on her. 

“Martha…make him go!”

Martha put her hand on the Doctor’s shoulder. “She’s right, we have to hurry.”

The Doctor swallowed and picked Rose up, but only to carry her out of the road so she wouldn’t be trampled and set her down near a house. She squeezed his hand, giving him a smile, and only after he and Martha were gone did she give into the pain. Her body shook with sobs and spasms as she dry heaved. Tears rolled down her cheeks. An invisible force continued to rip her open, no doubt going for her heart.

A preacher ran up the street. “I told thee so! I told thee so! The world is ending in a mighty storm! This earth shall descend into the pits and the saved shall ascend! It’s not too late! Repent! Repent and be saved!!” 

_Hurry, Doctor,_ she thought as she cried. 

She heard someone settle down beside her. She peeked open her eyes, blinking away the tears, and saw a man kneeling in front of her. He had a narrow face, short brown hair, green eyes, and he was wearing what looked like clothes from her era—a t-shirt, hoodie, and trainers. He seemed to recognize her, but she was sure she’d never seen him before in her life. She whimpered in pain. He put his hand on her arm and stared at her, silently demanding that she endure.

Minutes passed. The wind roared, thunder boomed, and people screamed. Hundreds of voices laughed in the distance: the Carrionites entering the world through time and space. Rose wasn’t fading, though. That meant it wasn’t over yet. Whatever the Doctor was doing she hoped he’d hurry. 

The man was her anchor through the storm and the agony of having reality torn apart so close to her. He didn’t touch her except for the hand on her arm, which moved to her back when she started to dry heave again, but it was as comforting as a hug from the Doctor would have been at that moment. Gradually, the wind began to slow, the thunder diminished, and the screams faded and died, along with the pain. 

Rose closed her eyes and sighed in relief, slumping forward. The man caught her and held her while she gathered her wits. She felt better than she had since emerging from the TARDIS. A weight she didn’t know she’d been under was lifted from her shoulders. It was over. They were gone. And now she was going to go find the Doctor and Martha, drag them back to the TARDIS, and sleep for about a year.

“Are you alright, Rose?” the man asked. His voice was gentle, soothing. 

“Yeah,” she said, leaning away. “’m fine. Thank you.”

“That was weird, eh?”

“Believe it or not, I’ve seen stranger. Like a bloke wearing 21st century clothes in 1599 London.” She frowned. “Hang on a minute… You called me Rose.”

“It’s your name.” 

“Yeah, but how did you know that?” 

“Because you told it to me.” He said as if was the most obvious thing in the world, smiling a bit. “You know, it’s fun getting to be the cryptic one for once. …God, you’re so young. I almost can’t believe it.”

“Who are you?” she asked softly.

His smile deepened with fond familiarity. “A friend.” 

“You’re not… Oh, God, you’re not the Doctor, are you?” she asked quietly, staring into his eyes for any sign of her Time Lord.

The man shook his head. “No, actually, I’m a nurse. Come on, Rose, get up. I have to get back and you have to get to him.” He got to his feet and held out a hand to help her up. “Or else he’ll come along, and he can’t see me yet.”

Eyeing him warily, Rose accepted his hand and he helped her to her feet. He hesitated for a moment only to pull her into a hug that she recuperated. He stepped away quickly, though, and stared at her again. There was something…odd about him. It was his eyes, she decided. They spoke of countless years of pain and strife, much like the Doctor’s did when he was in a mood. Whoever he was, he’d been around a long, long time. Rose reached forward and pressed her hands to his chest, almost surprised when she didn’t find two hearts beating beneath.

He smiled. “Nope. Go on. Get to the Globe.”

Rose let her hands drop to her sides. “You're from my future,” she realized. 

He nodded.

“What’s your name?”

“Can’t tell you that. I was expressly forbidden to, actually. And I’m supposed to tell you to not mention any of this to him at all for about, eh, four or five years. Something about timelines snapping, the future crumbling, and the universe imploding.” He shrugged. “I don’t really see how but you know how he is. Be seein’ you!” With another smile, the man turned and loped away. 

Rose watched him go for a moment. She exhaled a laugh and headed for the Globe. Yeah, she knew damn well how the Doctor could be. But how did he? 

She spun around, wildly looking for the man. She spotted him down the street, rounding the corner with a red-haired girl. She stared after them and realized, a slow smile spreading across her face, that she may have just met a future companion, and if his behavior was anything to go by, one that knew her quite well.

The thought settled well with her.


	10. The Dark Lady and the Glowing Girl

The following morning, Rose was sitting on the stage of the Globe just a few feet away from Martha and Shakespeare who were each telling jokes that the other didn’t understand. Rose understood them both, a testament to her experiences time traveling. She looked down at her cast and the newest addition to the autographs. _William Shakespeare_ , written in elegant script. She wished she could go home and show her mum to prove she’d met Shakespeare. Jackie hadn’t believed her last time.

Shakespeare pulled Martha close for a kiss and Rose lifted her head. Savior of the world or not, he’d still be getting a slap if he tried to take advantage of Martha. 

“I’ve only just met you,” she protested.

“The Doctor will never kiss you; he’s got his own lady there. Why not entertain a man who will?”

Martha smiled a bit. “I don’t know how to tell you this, oh, great genius, but…your breath doesn’t half stink.” 

Rose giggled quietly, unable to completely restrain herself. “Oh, go on, Martha. How many women can say they got a kiss from Shakespeare? …Actually, wait. Don’t answer that.”

Shakespeare started to protest, but the Doctor arrived then with something frilly around his neck, what looked like a huge inhuman skull in one hand, and a weird brown hat in the other. “Good prop store back there!” he crowed. “I’m not sure about this, though.” He held up the skull. “Reminds me of a Sycorax.”

“Lemme see that.” Rose walked over to get a better look. “Oh, my God, it does.”

“‘Sycorax?’” Shakespeare repeated. “Nice word. I’ll have that off you, as well.”

“I should be on ten percent. How’s your head?” 

“Still aching.”

“Here.” He reached up to unfasten the thing around his neck. “I got you this.” He put it around William’s neck. “Neck brace. Wear that for a few days till it’s better, although you might wanna keep it. It suits you.”

“What about the play?” Martha asked.

“Gone. I looked all over—every single copy of _Love’s Labours Won_ went up in the sky. You missed it, Rose. It was quite a show.” 

“My lost masterpiece,” Shakespeare said, resigned.

“You could rewrite it,” Rose suggested.

“Yeaaah, better not, Will,” the Doctor advised. “There’s still power in those words. Maybe it should best stay forgotten.”

“Oh, but I’ve got new ideas!” Shakespeare told him. “Perhaps it’s time I wrote about fathers and sons, in memory of my boy, my precious Hamnet.”

“Hamnet?” Martha frowned.

“That’s him.”

“Ham _net_?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Anyway!” the Doctor interjected, reaching behind them to pick up the crystal ball that held the trapped Carrionites, still screaming and clawing at the glass. “Time we were off. I’ve got a nice attic in the TARDIS where this lot can scream for all eternity… and we’ve got to continue on our way; perhaps a stop in Freedonia so Martha can pick up some of her things.” 

“You mean travel on through time and space?” Shakespeare asked.

The Doctor’s eyes widened. “You what?”

“You’re from another world like the Carrionites and Martha is from the future. It’s not hard to work out. But you…” he looked at Rose. “I can’t tell which you are.”

“Future,” Rose admitted.

“That may be, but there’s something about you that is not from this world. Regardless, I have seen you before, and I remember where now. It was several years ago. Your hair was longer and you were with another man.”

“Yeah, that was him,” she jerked her head at the Doctor. “In his last body.” 

“A soul that can have multiple bodies? It takes an amazing woman to love a man such as that.”

She smiled.

“That’s incredible. You are incredible,” the Doctor told him. 

“We’re alike in many ways, Doctor. I sense your loss, your grief, your madness. But we both go on living, go on talking, go on hoping. We must. What else are we fit for?” Shakespeare tilted his head to the side. “I do not claim to understand what you have lost, but I know that you are not alone. Not entirely.”

Rose and the Doctor moved at the same time, reaching out, their fingers twining together. He looked down at her and they smiled at each other. 

“Keep her close, Doctor. Absence from those we love is self from self—a deep banishment.”

The Doctor’s eyes tightened and he squeezed her hand. “I know...and I would not wish for any companion in the world but her. And, yes, you can use that one, too.”

Rose was glad he looked at Shakespeare then. Her breath hitched. She felt her eyes begin to sting and tightened her grip on his hand for a moment, feeling him squeeze back. She couldn’t stop the blush she felt rising to her cheeks, either. Knowing how the Doctor felt about her and hearing him acknowledge his feelings, even if he didn’t say them outright, were two completely different things. Her heartbeat increased and she felt a happy pressure in her chest. She caught Martha’s gaze and saw that the other woman was barely concealing a grin and Rose smiled shyly back at her.

Shakespeare smiled at them for a moment longer. He then turned to the woman besides him. “Martha,” he began, “let me say goodbye to you in a new verse. A sonnet for my Dark Lady.” He grasped her hand gently and Martha looked over his head at the Doctor who wagged his eyebrows once. 

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” he began. “Thou art more lovely and more—”

“Will! Will! She’s here! She’s turned up!” 

It was just as well that he was interrupted by the arrival of two of his actors, because Rose probably would’ve burst out laughing long before the Bard could’ve finished. She knew that sonnet thanks to the Doctor’s attempts at introducing her to Shakespearian literature. Martha herself looked like she was about to have a heart attack at the realization that a famous sonnet was about her. 

“We’re the talk of the town!” the younger actor exclaimed. “She heard about last night! She wants us to perform it again.”

“Who?” Martha asked.

“Her majesty! She’s _here_!”

A grin slowly stretched across the Doctor’s face as a fanfare began outside. A richly dressed older woman with a grand crown perched on her hair entered the pit, holding her skirt up just enough that she could walk without tripping. The elegant collar she wore reminded Rose of a flytrap flower. The two actors moved aside for the queen, bowing to her and the two guards that followed her.

“Queen Elizabeth the I!” the Doctor exclaimed, a kid at Christmas once more. 

“Doctor!” she rasped. 

“What?” he asked quietly, his smile fading. 

Shakespeare turned to look at him curiously while Martha, sensing their impending flight, rose to her feet.

“My sworn enemy,” the Queen growled.

“What?” the Doctor repeated dumbly. 

“And you, brazen hussy!” 

Rose was taken aback. “Ex _cuse_ me?”

“Off with their heads!” 

“What?!” he protested. 

“Never mind what!” Martha shouted. “Just run!”

The Doctor grabbed Rose’s hand and ran through the door to backstage as the queen shouted, “Stop them!”

“See you, Will!” Martha waved. “And thanks!” 

“Stop that pernicious pair!” the Queen ordered and Shakespeare laughed.

The guards chased them through the streets towards the TARDIS, shouting for them to stop. They weaved throughout the people, skirts hitched high so they wouldn’t trip, and Rose wasn’t sure whether or not to laugh or rage at being called a hussy. It seemed that there was no end to the list of British royalty that the Doctor had pissed off. She hoped that this queen didn’t form some secret anti-Doctor group; they’d barely survived the last one!

“What have you done to upset her?” Martha asked as they neared the TARDIS.

“How should I know? We haven’t even met her yet.” The Doctor let go of Rose’s hand to pull out his TARDIS key. He handed her the crystal ball as he unlocked the door. “That’s time travel for you! Still, can’t wait to find out!” He held it open and both girls rushed inside.

“That’s something to look forward to,” he murmured, grinning. The guards, only a few yards away now, stopped to aim their bows at him. “Ooh!” he quickly climbed inside the TARDIS, shutting the door just as an arrow whizzed through the air and stuck itself into the wood.

The TARDIS gave a mighty lurch as they entered the Vortex and they all fell to the floor. Rose stayed down though, shaking, and for a moment, Martha thought she was hurt or upset. Then she realized she was laughing!

It bubbled up from deep within her, filling the room with the fresh sound of giddiness. It had been so long since Rose had laughed so freely without the weight of circumstance pressing down. The TARDIS’s rotor seemed to hum merrily along with her. It was infectious. The Doctor was grinning and Martha started laughing as well. There wasn’t a singular reason for it, more of a combination of relief, victory, and the fact the Doctor had somehow (or, rather, _would_ somehow) make himself another enemy in the long line of British royalty. 

Thank God he was on good terms with Queen Elizabeth III. 

“Okay,” Rose said when they’d calmed considerably. “I get how you could make yourself an enemy of the crown— _again_ —”

“Oi!”

“—But what the hell did I do to earn the title of a ‘brazen hussy?’”

“What the hell _will_ you do,” he corrected.

“You know what I mean!”

“Well…there are a lot of things that could earn you that title in the 1500s. Ooh, this should be interesting. Do you want to go now or save it for later?”

“Later, please,” Martha said. “I don’t know about you two, but I haven’t had a proper sleep since before I met you. I’d like to at least have a kip before we do anything else, if you don’t mind.”

“Sleep sounds good,” Rose agreed.

“Ah, right, sorry about that,” he apologized. “Can’t have you keelin’ over from exhaustion, now can we?” He was silent for a few moments, his hands flitting across buttons on the console. “Hmm, right then. Rose, you help her find a guest room, then meet me in the infirmary, please.”

“Why?”

He looked up at her, all trace of amusement gone. “There’re a couple scans I need to run. I’d like to know how much time we have. You know, so we can make sure we squeeze in a trip back to Queen Elizabeth and avoid a paradox.”

“Doctor, I’m fine.” 

He shook his head. “Just get Martha settled and meet me there.” 

Rose’s jaw tightened at his tone and she stared him down for a few moments. He glared right back. “Fine. Come on, Martha,” she called stiffly. “Let’s get you sorted.” She stormed from the room without looking back and Martha wisely followed. 

Rose walked through the halls without direction. The TARDIS would let her know when they found the room she’d been preparing for Martha. Martha followed her without question and a quick glance showed her meek expression. Rose felt bad. What would it have been like if she was in Martha’s place, arriving on the TARDIS with a pair who had their own history, inside jokes and references, issues in the past that they were trying to resolve, and trying to make sense of it all and establish dynamics while adjusting to the whole time and space travel thing?

“Sorry,” Rose apologized. “This is a lot, yeah?”

“Just a bit,” Martha admitted. 

“Would you like me to explain anything?”

“Please. I still haven’t made up my mind properly, but—”

“But you’d like to know what you’re signing up for,” Rose finished with a smile. “I get it; I do. I really do need to get to the infirmary or he’ll come hunting for me. But tomorrow, if you want.”

“That’d be great.”

Rose stopped in front of a blank door, and tilted her head to the side. Yes, this was it. “Here we are.”

“What?”

“Your room.”

Martha raised her eyebrows and looked the door up and down. “How can you tell?”

Rose smiled, tapping her finger to her temple. “Some doors are marked, some aren’t. If you’re lookin’ for something that isn’t marked she’ll usually let you know.”

“How? Does she talk?”

“No.” Rose shook her head. “Just not in the way you’re thinkin’. She doesn’t work like that. She sends pictures…emotions…feelings. The Doctor always said I was more attuned to her than most so I don’t know how well you’ll be able to communicate with her, or if you even will be able to at all, so you might want to mark your door because rooms are almost never in the same place twice.”

“You said that earlier.” Martha was pleased she’d remembered. “So, can I just…go in?”

Rose nodded. 

Martha reached for the knob, but then pulled her hand back slightly. “What’s it gonna be like?”

“I have no idea.”

Martha tilted her head curiously and turned the knob, slowly pushing the door open. The room was dark except for the light filtering in from the hallway, but it wasn’t enough to make out much detail. Martha reached in to feel along the walls. 

“Is there a light switch?” Martha asked. “Does the ship even have electricity?”

“In some places,” Rose told her, nudging Martha into the room, “like the kitchen. Though, when it comes to the bedrooms… Unless you really want a lamp, the easiest way to get light is to do _this_.”

She lifted her hand and snapped her fingers once, loud and purposefully.

The entire room was suddenly illuminated with light that came from nowhere and everywhere. Rose looked around the room with interest. The TARDIS had a knack for knowing exactly what would best suit the occupant of the room: from shape and size, wall colors and decorations, the furniture within and their styles, the prints of the linens, the size and feel of the bed, and even the scent of the room.

The walls of Martha’s room were a light aqua blue that was oddly soothing. The floor seemed to be covered in a light brown carpet that felt soft beneath her feet and the ceiling was a deep indigo with tiny lights that were flickering gently, like a night sky. There was a window on the left side, hidden by light red curtains. When opened, it would show her anything from an alien landscape to a calm country to the view outside her window at home. She breathed in deep and she could smell pumpkin and spice and something else she couldn’t place, but it reminded her of autumn. There was a closet with light brown doors, a wooden dresser, a single-person bed in the middle of the room (with an aqua and brown striped duvet on top), a few pictures, and a door that, presumably, would lead to her bathroom.

She looked at Martha and was unsurprised to see she had her hands over her mouth, eyes wide as she gazed around the room in awe. Rose grinned. “Well?”

“It’s…oh, my God…it looks like home.”

“Really?” Rose looked around with new interest. “Huh. Mine didn’t so much. The Doctor says that the TARDIS knows what kind of room would make you most happy and she makes it that way to start. After this, if you decide one day you want bright pink neon walls, just _think_ about it and before long, you’ll open the door and hello pink!”

“This is absolutely amazing. You’re absolutely amazing!” she said to the ceiling. “Oh, I’m talking to a ship.”

“Happens to the best of us. My first trip I caught myself talkin’ to a twig!”

She laughed. “I don’t even want to know. But anyway, how do I turn the lights off? Like this?” She snapped her fingers but nothing happened. “Oi! How come it’s not working?”

“Like I said, she’s more used to me,” Rose said. “I don’t even really have to think about it anymore. Used to be I had to think ‘on’ an’ mean it to get ‘em on. He said it was ‘cos she wasn’t used to the way my mind worked. Try it a few times. Let her get used to your thoughts. Remember, she’s telepathic. Think ‘off’ or ‘lights off.’”

“Okay.” Martha closed her eyes, screwing up her face, probably thinking with all her might, and snapped. And then again. Nothing happened.

“Relax,” Rose encouraged. “A whisper can be more meaningful than a shout.”

Martha nodded, her face relaxing. She was still for a moment—and then she snapped her fingers once more. The lights died save for the twinkling ‘stars’ on her ceiling. “I did it,” she breathed.

“Woo.” Rose smiled.

She snapped her fingers again and nothing happened, but the time after the next the lights came back on.

“You’re getting it,” she said, folding her arms and giving the room another look. “Well, I think that’s all. Oh—your closet’s there and the loo should be through that door.” She pointed to the respective doors. “You should find the clothes you left in the wardrobe in your closet, maybe a few more things in your size from there, too. If you need anything, just leave the room and start walking. You’ll find us within a few minutes. Though, mind you, if you’re ever lookin’ for something and you don’t find it within about, eh, ten minutes, you might as well give up.” 

“Why’s that?”

“You’re not meant to find it, or someone’s inside that doesn’t want to be found.” 

“And how would the TARDIS know something like that?”

“I told you, she’s telepathic. She exists differently than we do. He tried explainin’ it once but all it did was give me a headache. With the Doctor, sometimes you just gotta go with things and nod whenever he stops for breath.”

“Sounds like a normal bloke. Oh, before you go, how do I…mark my door?”

Rose shrugged. “Whatever you want. Put a sticky note, tie a shirt to the knob, scribble on the door with marker, or you could even try asking for a different color of door. Same way you get the lights off. …Sleep well, Martha.”

“You too. And good luck with… Well…” She inclined her head the way they’d come from. 

“Thanks,” she mumbled. “Night.” She turned and walked out of the room, heading in the opposite direction of the control room. 

Martha sighed and looked around at her room again with a smile. Not unlike her home—but at the same time, completely different. The branches of coral along parts of the walls definitely weren’t in her house. Their color matched the room’s color scheme; however, pretty as they were, the stalks were definitely alien. Another difference was the fact that there wasn’t any lamp or overhead lights (except for the stars), but the room was still illuminated. The TARDIS had done a good job of mimicking the place Martha felt happiest—she would give the ship that—and she could, at the very least, fall asleep here peaceably. 

_Like spending the night at a friend’s_ , she decided.

She looked down at the red dress she wore and realized suddenly that she had no idea how to unlace a bodice by herself. She started for the door, intending to call Rose back and ask for help—but then she stopped, one hand on the door, and frowned. She was a time traveler now. Even if she didn’t decide to stay with them for long, there could come a time in the very near future when she needed to know how to do something like this the way someone native to the time would. So she turned away from the door and walked over to the mirror on the wall to figure out how the hell to undo the damn thing herself. 

Meanwhile, in another part of the ship, Rose had found her room not far from Martha’s, across from the Doctor’s like it usually was these days. One of the big things about the TARDIS was that she knew what they needed, even if it wasn’t what they wanted. Martha must have needed familiarity, something normal she could retreat to amidst the insanity of life with the Doctor. After returning from packing up her mum’s flat, she’d opened the door and found herself standing in an almost exact replica of the room she’d grown up in, right down to the color of the duvet on her bed. 

Though it seemed that the TARDIS had finally decided Rose was allowed to have her preferred room back: the walls were lavender with soft pink bordering, matching the duvet and pillows, and the carpet was TARDIS blue (the Doctor’s idea of a joke; Rose couldn’t convince the ship to set it right). Still, it was nice to have the room back to the way she liked, carpet included, and not to be reminded of her home in the Powell Estate every five seconds.

“Thank you,” she murmured, running her hand along the wall. The ship hummed in response. 

Rose smiled sadly and patted the wall then went about changing into her pyjamas. The Doctor was probably pacing, waiting for her to turn up, but she didn’t care. Five extra minutes while she got herself sorted wouldn’t hurt anyone. She removed the dress and the little bit of makeup that had survived their excursion, brushed the tangles out of her hair, and changed into the threadbare sweats and t-shirt hanging on the edge of her bed. She stood in front of the mirror and stared at herself again. She was doing that a lot lately. 

_“You even look like him.”_

Short, blonde hair that used to be past her shoulders–cut to be more manageable and so it wouldn’t get in her face as much while she ran. 

_“You’ve changed so much.”_

A narrow face that used to be rounded and innocent—her innocence was long since gone, ripped away by the cruelness of the universe. 

_“And you’ll keep on changing.”_

A lean body that used to be soft from a life of chips and telly—hardened under the strife of being the companion to Time’s Champion.

_“She’s not Rose Tyler. Not anymore. She’s not even human…”_

Green eyes that used to not reflect pain and death—her eyes had gazed into Time itself and drawn it in.

“Mum,” Rose whispered, putting her hands over her face. She swallowed and tried very hard not to cry because the last thing the Doctor needed was to see evidence of tears. He’d blame himself even more than he probably already was.

Jackie Tyler would never understand the impact of her words on her daughter, especially now when Rose’s humanity was being questioned. Because what human can survive with huon particles in them? What human can feel obsolete magic being performed and gaping holes in reality? What human could stare into the eyes of a Judoon without flinching or make it through a naming without even passing out?

She pulled the TARDIS key out from under her shirt and cradled it in her hands. It was warm, which to her represented the life within the ship itself.

She hadn’t been lying to Shareen when she said that this unimpressive piece of metal was the most valuable thing she owned. It represented her freedom, her home, and the madman who’d stolen her heart. She loved him. She’d loved him before he’d given her this little key. She’d barely known him, she’d been more than a little afraid of him, and yet the thought of him leaving her behind had scared her more than the Gelth-zombies, than the rays of solar energy inches from her body, than the army of shop window dummies. He’d given her the key to prove he wouldn’t just leave her and, really, he hadn’t.

_“What are you? What are you?”_

“Let’s find out, shall we?” she asked her reflection. 

When Rose got to the infirmary the Doctor was waiting for her like she’d expected, fiddling with the control panel on a device on the counter. Rose stood in the doorway with her arms folded and cleared her throat softly to catch his attention. He looked up at her, swallowing once, and then glanced back at the panel to press another button before turning and sliding his hands into his jacket pockets. They looked at each other for a few silent moments. 

“I’m sorry,” he finally said.

“You say that a lot, Doctor.”

“And I mean it…almost every time.” 

“Oh? And when haven’t you meant it?”

He rubbed the back of his neck absently. “Well…um…the other day, for example. I walked in on you singing in the kitchen as you made the tea. You got mad. I said I was sorry.” He paused and grinned. “I wasn’t.”

Rose rolled her eyes. “You’re never been sorry when you catch me singing.”

“Not once,” he agreed. “You have a lovely singing voice. Better than me.”

“I s’pose,” she mumbled, looking away.

He swallowed and lowered his hands to his sides. “I am sorry for earlier. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“Just sort of happens with you, right?”

“Right. I… Just…” he exhaled loudly and Rose looked up to see his shoulders hunched under some unseen weight. She didn’t wait for him to finish, walking forward to hug him, slipping her arms firmly around his waist. He didn’t even really think,—it was an automatic response, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close as he buried his face in her hair. They stood like that for several minutes, just listening to each other’s breathing, taking comfort in the closeness and the soothing rhythm of his heartsbeat.

Rose couldn’t help it. She yawned loudly and buried her face in his chest. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head before stepping back, breaking her grip, and patting the bed. “C’mon. Up you get.”

“Can’t it wait?” she complained. “It’s been a long couple of days.”

“No, it really can’t.”

“What are you even lookin’ for?”

The Doctor stared at her desolately. “They could be killing you, Rose. One day you might find yourself burning from the inside out. I need to know how long we’ve—” he stopped abruptly and turned away. She didn’t need to see his face to know what he meant.

Without further questioning, she sat down on the bed and let him do his work. He shined the sonic in her eyes several times, each time with a different setting. She held her breath as he ran a scanner over her that looked like it was made from repaired parts of a record player. He took a vial of blood and a lock of her hair. He listened to her heartbeat, her breathing, and her pulse. Almost as an afterthought, he gave her broken arm another boost with the sonic.

Rose sat with her legs dangling off the bed, swinging her feet as she watched him analyze the results. His face was smooth like it always was when he was trying not to show how he felt, but she recognized the tightness in his jaw, the way his eyes were slightly crinkled. He couldn’t hide things from her the way he could in his last body. She’d been with this form since its creation—hell, she’d caused its creation—and she knew all the expressions and motions, all the subtle nuances and reactions. She probably knew him better than anyone alive.

“I don’t understand,” he finally murmured. “They’re there. They’re definitely in you. I can see them! They’re registering and everything. And from the looks of things, they’ve been there a while. Since the Gamestation, I’d say. When you absorbed the Heart you absorbed everything; not just time, but also the huon within her. I know I took the entire Vortex out of you and, well, obviously most of the huon particles…but not all of them. You should be dead, Rose. Do you understand?”

She nodded, her eyes staring straight into the Doctor’s with complete and utter trust. “But I‘m not.”

“I know.” He paused, simply looking back into her eyes for a moment. “And I hate this, but there’s another round of scans I need to do, but then we can call it a night.”

“Well, go on, then. ‘m knackered.” To prove her point, her mouth stretched wide in a huge yawn. She covered her mouth with the back of her hand and blinked a few times. “Sorry.”

The Doctor reached into his pocket and pulled out a container, holding it out for her to see. “I kept a vial of the particles from the Torchwood lab. I’ve been studying them off and on since we left Donna. I was going to add them to the TARDIS for safekeeping, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. …Do you mind?”

“What?”

“You said you first noticed something when we were down in the lab. When I activated these.” He gave the vial a little shake. “So, I figure the same thing will happen again. Then I can compare the scans and—”

“Get on with it,” Rose ordered, pulling her legs up onto the bed and crossing them. “I trust you.” The Doctor swallowed and moved directly in front of her. Her eyes didn’t leave his for a second as she smiled and nodded encouragingly even though she was afraid. Because that’s what you just had to do sometimes when you lived the life they did, even if no one was buying it. 

He twisted the knob at the top of the container and Rose saw the contents glow before tingles ran along her skin and she shuddered, closing her eyes reflexively. The singing was back, wordless and hauntingly beautiful. She smiled to herself. When her eyes opened and she looked at the Doctor again, he nearly dropped the vial. 

It was like being thrown back a year to the Gamestation, watching through different eyes as Rose—his beautiful, fantastic, stubborn, loving Rose—sat before him, glowing, golden, beautiful. It was like feeling the fear of seeing her as the Bad Wolf, hearing what she’d done and knowing that she would burn soon…and that it would be his fault. It was like feeling the utter _wrongness_ in time and space as she saved Jack from his extermination. It was like realizing what he had to do to save her, the woman he loved, who loved him in return, and calmly accepting it. That body had been born as he wanted to die and she’d made him want to live again. It only seemed right that that body died so she could live, and the next one was born with the desire to live, to protect and to love her so she never had to die for him. 

And here she was again, sitting before him, glowing and golden and beautiful, always beautiful. It was a small consolation to see that her entire body wasn’t shimmering like it had back then—just her eyes. The irises were completely golden, the pupils deep black like dark stars, glinting and shining. There was something else, too; something ancient. He leaned in closer and was immensely relieved when he didn’t see Time looking back at him. 

She wasn’t the Bad Wolf. 

His mind was racing, considering everything from science to logic to old philosophies to things in religions. Absolutely nothing was impossible as far as Rose Tyler was concerned. She’d proven that time and again. 

He set the vial on the bed next to her, softly ordering her not to touch it, leaving to get his sonic. She sat patiently, head cocked to the side as if listening to something he could not hear—which, in all likelihood, was what she was doing. Whatever the case, she didn’t seem to be in pain, and that was enough. 

Rose let him run the scans, obeying silently, not touching the vial. The singing was soothing in her mind and she felt _safe_ —but she still didn’t want to touch them, just in case. While the Doctor tried to get his answers, Rose tried to get hers; the song was coming from somewhere. Songs didn’t sing themselves. She listened harder, focusing in on the wordless melody. 

“Are you okay?” the Doctor asked and her eyes flicked to him for a moment.

“I can hear the singing again. I…I hear it in my dreams sometimes.” 

“Singing?” he asked, relieved to hear her voice and not the layered one of the Bad Wolf.

“I…I remember…I heard it when I looked inside her…. Oh, it’s _her_! The TARDIS. She sings, Doctor.”

 _Oh._ “I know,” he said softly. 

“And she loves you.”

The Doctor smiled, lifting his eyes to the ceiling. “I know.” 

Then he cleared his throat and twisted the knob again. The huon particles within settled and their glow died. A moment passed and Rose remained the same, but before the Doctor could properly start to panic, the light in her died as well, the gold fading from her eyes. She blinked a few times, a slight frown on her face, and she swallowed.

“She loves you a lot,” Rose murmured.

He smiled. “And I love her, too.”

She closed her eyes, smiling. “She knows.”

The Doctor walked with her back to her room, arm around her waist to support her. She’d been tired before she arrived in the infirmary and the brief stint with the active huon had drained her of most of her remaining energy. She was barely conscious when he gently ushered her into her room, noting the change in décor, and tucked her into bed. He sat on the edge of her mattress and gently stroked her hair in a soothing rhythm. 

Sometimes—like right now, for instance—he couldn’t believe what she’d done to him. Two years he’d known her. A measly two years out of more than nine hundred and never had he changed more drastically in such a short period of time, regenerations aside. Never had a single entity, let alone a young human, affected him in such a way. He felt like some of his past lives were scoffing at him except for his most recent. _He_ was shaking his head, smiling in understanding; because, after all, he’d died for that woman. The rest of them, however…well, if they were all brought together again for some reason, they could argue about it then.

He shook his head and looked down at the young woman sleeping on the bed. She was completely out and probably wouldn’t stir for a good ten hours or more considering how much sleep she’d gotten recently and the strain on her body and mind. Martha would probably be the same. Rose’s temper he could handle, but he had no idea how Martha would react to being awoken before she liked. If he wanted to avoid regeneration, it would probably be best to just let them sleep undisturbed. 

The infirmary was closer than it had been when they’d left, by about two corridors, which meant he was close enough to reach her quickly if she had a nightmare but far enough away he hopefully wouldn’t wake her up. He pulled off his jacket and tie, tossing them onto the chair, and steeled himself for the long night ahead. He had two dozen results to study and countless theories to work through. He was going to figure out what the hell was going on inside Rose Tyler.


	11. Getting Along

The Doctor and Rose considered Martha a friend, a travelling companion. The TARDIS considered her a pet. Even without her strong link to the sentient ship, Rose could tell and she was pretty sure the Doctor knew it, too. The TARDIS had given Martha a comfortable bed, the appropriate food, and the appropriate toys, like any proper owner should, and she liked to play with her. 

Early in the morning after breakfast, Martha went looking for the library and ended up in the console room. Four times. Rose went to help her and promptly located the library. Later in the afternoon, Martha went looking for Rose to help her find the library again, and wound up in the swimming pool. She took her jacket off and hung it from the door then quickly located the console room where the Doctor and Rose were to tell him she’d found it. Except, when they opened the door, they found themselves in a back entrance to the library. 

“She likes you,” the Doctor assured Martha on their way back to the console room. The medical student was glaring at him with her arms folded across her chest. “Honestly; she’s just having a bit of fun. You’re not the first, believe me, and I doubt you’ll be the last.” 

“Did she do that to you?” Martha asked Rose.

“Er, no,” Rose admitted. “She’s always, um…liked me?”

She rolled her eyes pointedly. 

“Do you have a pretty room?” the Doctor asked.

“What?”

“Your room. Is it pretty?”

“I guess so, yeah.”

“Well, then. If she didn’t like you she wouldn’t have given you a pretty room,” the Doctor said. “Last one she didn’t like got a generic hotel room, and he ended up nearly getting us killed.”

They arrived in the console room. Rose immediately returned to her perch in the pilot’s seat and the Doctor went back to fiddling with the console. Martha leaned against the railing and watched them for a moment. Nothing was going on and she felt oddly like she was intruding. She wondered if she would ever truly be welcomed onboard. The ship didn’t seem to view her on the same level as her other two occupants. The two of them seemed relatively comfortable with the silence, but to Martha it was awkward.

“So, um, what happened to him?” she asked. “That guy who nearly got you killed?”

“His name was Adam,” Rose explained. “We picked him up from Utah in 2012.” 

“He wanted to make a mint by stealing secrets from the future. So, he got a door to his brain in the middle of his forehead to access it all. Ended up giving invaluable information about us and we nearly died.” The Doctor sounded a little too cheerful, looking at something on the monitor. “I only take the best and he didn’t quite reach the mark. So I dropped him back at home, brain door in all. Though, I do wonder how it went with his mother…”

“So,” Martha held up her hand. “When you say ‘don’t get a brain door,’ you’re talking about him?”

“Yep. So, keep that in mind next time you’re tempted to do something like record Shakespeare.”

“Yessir.”

“Oh, that reminds me!” The Doctor stepped away from the console and clasped his hands behind his back. “We haven’t explained the rules to you, have we?”

“Rules?” Martha blinked. “There're rules? You mean besides ‘don’t ruin history?’”

“Oh, of course." Martha frowned. He was using that tone that made her feel like an idiot for not knowing something already. “Rule one: don’t wander off.”

“Except in the event of boredom,” Rose interjected. “Or when presented with an opportunity to discover something important.” 

He shot her a look. “Rule two: always do what you’re told.”

“Unless what he tells you to do involves him dying or a bunch of people dying, then ignore ‘im.”

“Rule four—no, wait a minute—three: no pets. This includes dogs, cats, birds, raccoons, or humans.”

“Or horses. But dogs with no noses from Barcelona are perfectly fine. Riiiight, Doctor?”

“No. If I can’t go back for Arthur, you can’t have one of those dogs.”

“Rude.”

“And still not ginger. Rule four: if we are in the past or the future and you see yourself, do not get close unless you absolutely have to, and under no circumstances should you touch. That’s a paradox and paradoxes can mean reapers and, trust me, you never want to find out what a reaper is.”

Rose didn’t have a retort for that one.

“Rule five—oh, wait. Do you like pears?”

Martha blinked. “Uh, yeah. They’re alright.” 

The Doctor made a face. “Well, rule five: no pears allowed onboard. You can eat those vile things all you like, but you’ll do it on a planet and not on my ship.”

“Why? Do they mess up the TARDIS or something?”

“No, I just hate them. Disgusting fruits trying to be apples and failing. Now apples, apples are fine, and you can bring an apple tree on board and we’ll plant it in the garden.”

“You have a garden?” 

“And bananas! Bananas are good. One of the best fruits in the universe and you can bring as many of them as you like onboard. Oh, I should take you two to Vilengard.” 

“There was a factory there once,” Rose explained. “It made sonic blasters and he didn’t like that too much, so he took it upon himself to blow it up and plant a banana grove there.”

“Bananas are good,” was all he had to say in defense. 

“Do you _like_ blowing things up?” Martha asked.

“No! Well, when I say ‘no’, I mean not exactly. Well…by ‘not exactly’ I mean…it’s kind of fun….” 

Martha asked if they were going anywhere today and the Doctor shook his head, claiming repairs needed doing and suggested she explore the TARDIS. Walking without a destination was the best way to discover rooms; the TARDIS was more inclined to impress. With their companion occupied, the Doctor and Rose retreated to the infirmary to go over what he’d found last night.

Rose stood beside him as he explained and compared scan results. “Look here? This is the first one I took, and here’s the second when the particles were active. Do you see? It’s like they were asleep and then they woke up. That must be why we’ve never seen any signs until now—they’re dormant. They’ve been dormant for months. Like they were dormant in Donna until her wedding.”

“But you said they woke up in her because of all the—the nerves and stress about her wedding. I’m stressed all the time.”

“Good point,” he muttered, combing his fingers through his hair in thought. “What were you feeling? When you absorbed the Vortex, I mean. What were your emotions?”

Rose swallowed, her eyes growing distant as she tried to remember. Her memories of the final minutes before Bad Wolf were fuzzy at best. “A bit of everything, I s’pose. I was…I was angry and scared. Determined, obviously…and desperate.” 

“Lots of adrenaline and cortisol, then?” 

“I guess.”

“So since you were really worked up when they were first introduced to your system, it could be that they’re used to living in a chemical warzone. Just a theory.”

Rose bit the inside of her lip and considered that. She walked over to the bed and pulled herself up, sitting on the edge. “So they’re used to a stressed environment and it’s never bothered them. That means they must’ve woken up ‘cos of what happened in the lab, being around other active particles.”

“It might have even been Donna’s arrival that started it,” the Doctor mused, sitting beside her. “Or else the TARDIS should’ve woken them up long ago.”

“But they came from the TARDIS, so maybe…never mind.”

“No, what were you going to say?”

She exhaled loudly. “Maybe since they’re from the TARDIS, being near the source is normal to them, too. The particles from the lab were different and being near them sort of stirred up the ones in me.”

The Doctor blinked and a grin stretched across his face. “Brilliant,” he murmured. 

“But what about me?” Rose looked up at him. “I mean…they’re not killin’ me, are they?”

“No sign of cellular degeneration, or atomic structures unraveling, or DNA morphing…nothing. You’re as healthy as always. Well, except for…” he gestured to her arm.

“So I’m fine?”

“You’ve got huon particles fused with about half the cells in your body. You are far from fine.”

“I meant they’re not just gonna make me drop dead one day?”

The Doctor didn’t respond, returning to the counter, and piled the scans altogether into one neat stack, sliding a rubber band around them. Rose slid off the bed and reached out, placing her good hand on his shoulder. He stopped moving for a moment, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, then opened a drawer and set the stack inside, pushing it shut, before he finally turned to face her. They stared at each other in silence. Rose moved her hand up to his cheek and she felt his jaw twitch beneath her hand. He opened his mouth to say something then changed his mind, sighing and pursing his lips. 

“I don’t know,” he finally murmured. “I have no idea. There’s no precedent. …You are unique, Rose Tyler, in more ways than one.”

Rose smiled.

“So, we’ll just have to keep an eye on you. If you feel anything change, anything new that you can’t explain, you have to let me know, and if you ever feel like you’re burning, even for a second—because that’s what it will feel like—I don’t care where we are or what we’re doing; you _have_ to tell me immediately. Do you understand me? _Immediately_. A single second could be the difference between surviving and…and dying. And I can’t lose you, Rose, I _can’t_.”

“You will, though, you know.” She told him softly and he flinched, trying to turn away, but she put her other hand on his cheek, forcing him to look at her. “One day I’m gonna die. It’s going to happen, no matter what, and when it does, you can’t just stop and give up. The universe needs you.”

The Doctor covered her uninjured hand with his and placed a soft kiss on her palm, staring somberly into her eyes. Then abruptly his mood changed and he was grinning. He took a step back and clasped both hands over hers. “Well, I’ll tell you what, you’re not dying today so let’s go somewhere! How about we take Martha to dinner? I know this excellent tavern in 1870. I saved the owner’s life a few centuries ago. Nice bloke, beautiful singing voice.”

“I’m not gonna ask how you know that.”

“Yeah, probably better that way,” he agreed with a nod. “Well, what do you think? Sound like fun?”

“I s’pose, but Doctor—”

“Excellent! 1870s, here we come! You go find Martha and tell her the plan and find something to wear.”

“Alright, then. Change your clothes, Doctor.”

He looked down at his ensemble. “What’s wrong?”

“You haven’t changed since we got back from 1599 and your suit smells. So better add a shower in there, too. Don’t look at me like that and don’t think you can get by just’ changing your shirt. Look at it this way,” she added when he started to protest. “Now you won’t be bored while she an’ I are getting dressed.”

He glowered at her but knew better than to argue. Privately he agreed with her but between his time in the infirmary and the work the TARDIS needed done this morning, he’d been too busy to stop by his room for a fresh change of clothes. So he let go of her hand, giving her a soft kiss on her forehead.

“And let’s try not to land somewhere that needs saving, yeah? She might be starting to think that’s all we do.” 

Rose located Martha fairly quickly, in the antigravity room of all places. Martha was drifting through the air lazily, her arms folded behind her head. Rose smiled, kicking off her shoes in the hallway, and stepped into the room. Her foot touched the ground for a second before the zero gravity registered and she pushed herself into the air. Martha rolled over and waved at her.

“Hey.”

“Hey yourself,” Rose smiled, kicking her legs to propel herself upwards. “You’re not stuck or anything, are you?”

“Nope. Scared me at first but this is actually pretty fun. I’m flying!”

“How’d you find this place?”

“Well, I was just walking and opening doors at random, but then I started thinking about rockets and spaceships,” she said. “Whenever you see footage of astronauts in space, they’re always floating because there’s no gravity. I opened a door, found this place, next thing I knew I was floating! Mind you, it feels really weird.”

Rose looked around the blank white walls of the room. “Do you know how this room works?”

“It just cancels gravity, right? Like we’re floating in outer space.”

“That’s not what I meant. This room is—you know how in films they use those green screens to add in backgrounds and stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, this room is like that. Give me a push, will ya?” She leaned towards the control panel on the wall and Martha gave her a shove. Rose glided over to the panel, grabbing onto the handle next to it so she wouldn’t float off. 

“Oh, I didn’t notice that before.” Martha squinted. “What’s it do?”

Rose pressed one of the buttons and the room darkened. A second passed and the room was illuminated with thousands of stars twinkling around them. Martha flipped upright, gazing around in wonder. Rose smiled at the expression on her face. Usually she was the one being amazed at things, it was nice to get to do the amazing once in a while. No wonder the Doctor liked traveling with humans. 

“We’re in space,” Martha exclaimed quietly. “Oh, my God…it’s beautiful.”

“This is my favorite setting,” Rose told her. “It’s as close to the real thing as you can get. Remind me later and I’ll have the Doctor take us into space and you can sit on the edge of the TARDIS and look out.”

Martha didn’t appear to be listening, gazing at the ceiling in astonishment. Her mouth was open in a smile and there were tears in her eyes reflecting the starlight. Some of them spilled over the edge and trickled down her cheeks. Rose fell silent, allowing her a few minutes to enjoy the beauty of space. 

“They all have names,” Rose said quietly. “The stars. Each and every one of them and the Doctor knows ‘em all.”

“I’m dreaming, aren’t I?” Martha asked. “I mean…I have to be. You an’ him, you can’t be real. This whole place just can’t be real.”

“Feels too good to be true, don’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s got its ups and downs. The universe is beautiful but it’s ugly, too. When you’re with the Doctor you get both. Oh, I almost forgot. There was a reason I came and found you. We were gonna take you to dinner. The Doctor says he knows this good place in in 1870. It should be nice and boring.” 

Martha looked at her, one eyebrow arched. “And what do you two consider boring? Saving a city instead of the world?”

“Boring as in ‘absolutely nothing happens.’ ‘Cos, believe it or not, we don’t just hop from one crisis to another. So, what do you say?”

“Yeah, sounds good to me. Um…how do we get out of here?” 

Rose pressed the button to bring the lights back up and the stars disappeared, replaced by the white walls again. Martha looked a bit disappointed. Rose braced her feet against the wall then pushed off and rocketed towards the door, flipping over so she was going feet-first and would be able to land when gravity was reintroduced. Her body regained its weight as she passed through the door and her feet dropped a foot to the floor. Her momentum sent her stumbling forward and she caught herself on the wall. 

“You alright?” Martha called.

“Yep. Come on, your turn!”

Martha flipped herself so her head was closest to the door and frog-kicked towards the door. Rose stood on the threshold, just beyond the antigravity field and held out her hands for Martha to grab. 

“Alright, now just flip yourself so your feet—yep, like that.” She pulled Martha out of the room and, unprepared for the sensation, Martha very nearly lost her footing, but managed to stay upright. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Martha nodded, letting go. “Just feels weird. I’m alright now, so which way’s the wardrobe?”

A half an hour later, Martha and Rose were in the console room with the Doctor, all of them dressed and ready. The Time Lord had indeed showered and changed into his blue suit. His hair was down and fluffy like it was when he left it to it’s own devices, and more suited to the time they were heading to this way. Rose thought he looked adorable like that. 

“Ladies, you look lovely,” he told them, his eyes lingering on Rose, who was wearing an off-shoulder white shirt and a cream skirt.

The Doctor managed to actually land them in the right time and place for once. They stepped out of the TARDIS at to find themselves looking at a scene from an American western film. Lots of wooden double-story houses and buildings, horses tied to posts, people strolling down the street enjoying the dusk air. A man on a horse galloped past them on their way out of town. He looked down at them and if he noticed something odd about the box behind them he didn’t react, simply tipping his hat politely and continuing on.

“Was that guy wearing a cowboy hat?” Rose asked when he was gone.

“Yep,” the Doctor said cheerfully. “I like those hats. I’ve got a few in the wardrobe somewhere. Well, Miss Tyler, Miss Jones—shall we?” He offered his arms to them and they headed into town.

“Are we in the Wild West?” Martha asked curiously. “Like in the films?”

“Well, the West wasn’t really all that wild. Hollywood over exaggerated things, I’m afraid. That being said, I don’t think we have to worry about getting hit by a stray bullet in an epic, violent gunfight in front of a saloon or caught up in an evil bank scandal.”

“Blimey, you’re like the ultimate tour guide to the universe, aren’t you?”

“Actually, yes, yes, I am.”

“Alright, then, where and when are we exactly?”

“We’re in Haven, Utah in 1876.” He told them. “This place started as an inn and a store built next to a creek. Settlers starting coming through heading west, they’d stop here to rest and resupply and water their animals in the creek. Word spread and soon the little homestead became an outpost, and now it’s a town! Population stands at about three hundred people who live here and anywhere from a dozen to a hundred travelers. New people always coming and going—we’ll blend right in.

“Lovely year, 1876,” he went on cheerfully. “The very first Kentucky Derby this year—that’s a horse race, if you didn’t know—Alexander Graham Bell makes the first phone call—I was there, it was brilliant—and George Green patents the dental drill. Just over a decade out of the Civil War, the people are still expanding westward. There’s a gold rush going on in the Dakotas right now and the former slaves are starting to earn their rights to vote.”

“So I’m not going to get carted off, am I?” Martha glanced around nervously.

“Oh will you stop worrying about that?” He admonished with a frown. “People didn’t randomly go around grabbing anyone with dark skin and forcing them to work. Not here, anyway. Besides, if anyone tried, they’d have to deal with me, and that is not something they’d like.”

“So, where’s the place, Doctor?” Rose asked.

“’s just ahead. Look, there it is. _The Yellow Moon_ ,” he said proudly. “I helped name it after I saved his life.”

“Do they know?” Rose asked. “The owner and his wife, do they know what you are?”

“Not entirely,” he admitted. “They know I’m an alien but nothing else, so don’t mention it. I’m already going to have one hell of a job convincing him it’s me.”

A man was just leaving when they arrived so he held the door open for them, tipping his hat respectfully to them. The Doctor looked around the room with interest, quietly noting changes to the décor. Almost entire first floor was one room supported by posts throughout. Tables were spread all throughout, about half of them occupied by men and women alike. One table in the corner seemed to be hosting a card game, and another had a group of smokers around it laughing at what must have been a damn good joke. A wide staircase to the right of the room that led upstairs was roped off with a sign hanging from it that said _Keep Down_. The bar was on the left side of the room. A shiny counter with a selection of drinks and a single menu of what was offered on the wall, and a door just to the side that, presumably, led to the kitchen. A middle-aged man with a shock of curly red hair stood behind the counter talking with one of the patrons at the bar.

“Is that him?” Rose pointed to the bar and the Doctor followed her gaze, a grin stretching across his face.

“Yeah, that’s him. Joel Byrd. He used to have a beard. Must’ve taken my advice.”

The man in question raised his head and noticed them. “Evening, strangers!”

“Hello, Joel,” the Doctor replied cheerfully, guiding them to the bar. “Good to see you again.”

Joel cocked his head to the side. “Do I know you?”

“Well, I should hope so, it’s only been a couple of years. I’m the Doctor.”

Joel Byrd’s eyes registered perhaps the slightest bit of shock before he snorted. “I’ve met a few doctors passing through. You’ll have to be a bit more specific.”

“No, I’m not _a_ doctor, I’m _the_ Doctor.”

“Like hell you are.” Joel frowned, putting his hands on the counter. “See, everyone ‘round here knows a man called the Doctor helped save us three years back, but I actually knew him. You, sir, are not him, so why don’t y’all run along?”

“ _The Yellow Moon_ ,” the Doctor said evenly. “I was just joking when I suggested it but you thought it was brilliant.”

Joel frowned. “Sure, everyone around here knows I saved the town from something but you and I know the truth about what that something was, don’t we? Visitors from the stars, white tall humanoids with no hair and snake tongues: the Wartyxians. I was above the planet in my ship and I accidentally collided with theirs. It went down, landing just outside the town and they blamed you lot so they released a gas that night and would have killed everyone within ten miles if we hadn’t intervened. They refused to allow me to negotiate since I’m not from around here, so you had to do the negotiations yourself. But the Wartyxian’s communicate through song so you had to sing and after you mentioned it was my ship they hit, the lot of us had to sing back and forth to negotiate an antidote and repairs. The antidote released into the air that night made the moon appear yellow, ‘s why you chose to name the place _The Yellow Moon_.”

By the time the Doctor was finished, Joel’s jaw had dropped and his eyes were as round as saucers. “Doctor?”

The Doctor grinned. “Hello.”

“What in the name of God happened to you?” He gestured to the Doctor’s body. “You look…well you look…different.” 

“Same man, new face. It’s an alien thing,” the Doctor waved his hand. “Don’t worry about it but, yes, it’s still me. And this is Rose Tyler and Martha Jones.” He nodded to each of them in turn. “They travel with me now.”

Joel looked between Rose and Martha, smiling. “Pleasure to meet you both. Welcome to Haven. Though, Doctor, what happened to that charming young lady you were with? Peri, wasn’t it?”

Rose raised her eyebrows and looked at the Doctor curiously. He’d mentioned some of his previous companions after running into Sarah Jane but this was the first she’d heard of anyone named Peri. A shadow flitted across the Doctor’s face and she knew that whatever had happened to Peri, it was something he regretted deeply. 

“Ohn she’s…she’s not with me anymore, I’m afraid. She…” he swallowed and changed topics quickly. “But, ah, Rose has been with me for a while and Martha’s just joined us, actually. We were hoping we could have dinner here.”

“Certainly.” Joel smiled. “Have a seat at a table and I’ll send Evangeline out. She’ll be pleased to see you.”

“How is she?”

“She’s doing fine and recovering nicely. She insists she’s well enough to work the kitchen again, but we’ve hired on some help.”

“What happened?”

“She had a difficult pregnancy…” Joel’s eyes darkened with the memory. “It was a miracle she survived giving birth, but she did, and now we have a little girl. Isabelle.”

The Doctor’s smile was blinding. “That’s wonderful!”

A few minutes later they were seated at a table near the kitchen with Joel’s wife, a slender blonde woman named Evangeline, while another young man minded the bar so Joel could join them. Evangeline’s gray eyes scrutinized the Doctor intently for a moment and she said nothing, then she smiled and her gaze lost its intensity. 

“It’s good to see you again, Doctor. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

“It’s only been three years.”

“A long time for you, I mean. …Pardon my rudeness, but what are you doing here? Last time you turned up, you kicked the sky-ship out of the stars and nearly killed us all.”

The Doctor looked sheepish. “I am sorry about that. In my defense, they hit me.”

“There’s a shock,” Rose muttered. “Doctor, your driving is rubbish.”

“It wasn’t my fault that time. Honest.” 

“We didn’t bump into any ships on the way in.” She assured Evangeline. “We’re here for dinner and then we’ll be on our way. And if he hits a ship on the way out, I’ll have ‘im.”

Evangeline regarded the blonde woman and the new-Doctor, noting the way the way they sat close together, arms touching. Then she turned her attention away from the Doctor entirely and focused on his two companions. “Rose Tyler and Martha Jones. You’re from far away, though not as far as him, I should think. So many strange things where you’re from…we must look so simple to you.” Her voice softened, her eyes becoming distant. “Haven is unimportant—you did not mark it when you sang.” 

“I apologize,” Joel said after a moment of silence. “She’s…sometimes she says things that are a bit odd…she doesn’t mean anything by it.”

Evangeline looked down, blushing.

“No it’s alright. You’re a low-level psychic, I told you that,” the Doctor assured her, then to Rose and Martha he explained, “One person in about every million is. It’s not like witchcraft or anything; she’s just a bit more psychically aware than the average human. Clairvoyance is the most common.”

She stood up abruptly and smiled. “Well, you came for a meal, so that’s what you’ll get. I’ll let you up to meet Isabelle after.”

“Actually, Mrs. Byrd.” Martha held up her hand. “Um, in London, I’m a doctor. Your husband said you had complications during your pregnancy. If you’d like, I can give Isabelle an examination, see if she’s healthy.”

“You are not a doctor, miss, not quite yet, but I would be grateful if you would. We have no doctor in this town, the nearest one is five miles away.” Evangeline cocked her head to the side, gazing at them almost dreamily. “When I last saw you, Doctor, you were one of many, now you are the last. And you, little Wolf, you have all of time in your eyes…” She walked away then, her curly hair bouncing with each step, and disappeared into the kitchen.


	12. Carjackers

It was moments like this—standing just outside the TARDIS in the pouring rain in a back alley after being promised sun, clear skies, and apple grass—that Rose Tyler rued the day she first met a Time Lord who failed his driving test. She shot an angry look at him as she pulled the hood of her favorite gray hoodie over her head.

“Oh that’s nice!” Martha grouched, zipping up her jacket. “Time Lord version of dazzling!”

“Nah, bit of rain never hurt anyone.” the Doctor insisted. “Come on, let’s get under cover!”

The Doctor took Rose’s hand and pulled her through the street. It was dirty, like any poor town. Dumpsters here and there, lots of rubbish everywhere, and someone had laundry swinging from a line. Considering his track record, they’d probably ended up on the original Earth in the future.

“Admit it, Doctor, you got the flight wrong again!” she shouted. 

“No I didn’t! I was trying to go further into the future and not near the hospital. I did it! We _are_ on New Earth, though!”

“Well, it looks like same old Earth to me, on a Wednesday afternoon.” Martha informed him. 

“Hold on, hold on. Let’s have a look.” He let go of Rose’s hand and ran over to a blank screen in a small, covered alcove. Pulling out the sonic screwdriver, he shined it across the dead screen. Static appeared and he smacked the top of it then an image of a beautiful woman appeared on screen.

“—and the driving should be clear and easy.” She was one of those sunny types. Even five billion years in the future they still had people who were chronically cheerful. “With fifteen extra lanes open for the New New Jersey expressway.”

The image changed to the view Rose had seen the last time they were here. A bright clear blue sky over the beautiful spiraling buildings of New New York, the sunlight reflecting off the river, as the flying cars zoomed through the air in a beautiful, organized pattern out towards the grass. 

She smiled fondly at the memories that view brought back. She and the Doctor had spent time in the grassy hills the first time they arrived. He’d spread his jacket out and they’d laid on the ground, watching the city and sky as the wind had blown their hair, the smell of the apple grass had tickled their noses. She’d marveled at how different he was and how much remained unchanged. _Same man. New face._ Their first journey since his regeneration, and their first time really alone. She’d been working on sorting her feelings, trying to accept in her heart what she knew in her mind: that the skinny, big-haired, happy man was the same being as the man with short hair and big ears who liked to brood. She’d been getting there, but it was on that hill that she really fell in love again. 

“Oh that’s more like it! That’s the view we had last time.” He tapped the screen then peered out from under the cover of the alcove. “This must be the lower levels, down in the base of the tower. Some sort of under-city.”

“You’ve brought me to the slums?” Martha asked huffily. “My first trip into the future and he brings me to the projects.”

“Hey, don’t forget, my first trip, he took me to the bloody end of the world,” Rose reminded her.

“Oh, the slums!” She gave him a thumbs-up. “This is great, Doctor!” 

He grinned, either missing the sarcasm or ignoring it. “Isn’t it? Much more interesting down here, anyway. It’s all cocktails and glitter up there. This is the real city.”

“You’d enjoy anything,” she muttered.

“That’s me. Oh, the rain’s stopping! Better and better!”

“Doctor, you said sunlight and apple grass. I see neither. Let’s get back in the TARDIS and try to land up top, yeah?”

A noise behind her caused Rose to jump. She spun around, backing towards the Doctor as a part of one of the walls behind lifted up revealing a tall man in what looked like some sort of stall. “Oh! You should have said!” the man greeted. “How long you been there? Happy! You want Happy.” He ducked behind the counter and another stall opened up behind them. 

“Customers!” a very dark woman shouted down to another stall. “Customers! We’ve got customers!”

A grinning plump woman opened that stall. “We’re in business! Mother, open up the Mellow, and the Read!”

“Happy, Happy, lovely happy Happy!” the man held up some packets and shook them.

“Anger! Buy some Anger!” the dark woman held out a packet as well.

“Get some Mellow,” the plump woman told them with a smile. “Makes you feel all bendy and soft all day long!”

“Don’t go to them. They'll rip you off,” the man said to the potential customers. “Do you want some Happy?”

“No, thanks,” the Doctor responded flatly. 

Rose looked up at him. “What’s this? They didn’t have this last time.”

“Are they selling drugs?” Martha asked.

The Doctor slowly turned, looking from one stall to the next, and murmured, “I think they’re selling moods.”

“Same thing, isn’t it?”

“Hey, Doctor…five quid says that Sally woman from the screen’s on Happy.” Rose muttered, trying to lighten the mood. Before the Doctor could respond the cries of the vendors picked up with new vigor at the arrival of a thin, pale-faced woman wearing a dark coat and a scarf over her head. They beckoned to her almost like she was a dog wanting a bone. She headed for the friendliest-looking of the vendors: the plump woman with a nice smile.

“I want to buy Forget,” she quietly told the vendor, looking up at the woman behind the counter like she was her savior.

“I've got Forget, my darling. What strength? How much you want forgetting?”

“It's my mother and father. They went on the motorway.”

“Oh, that’s a swain.” The vendor frowned sympathetically and reached behind her and produced a small round slip, holding it out to the woman. “Try this. Forget 43. That’s two credits.”

The woman accepted the Forget 43 and gratefully handed over the money. She turned away, looking down at the tiny strip in her hand like it was precious. 

“Sorry,” the Doctor walked towards her, holding out his hand. She looked up. “But—hold on a minute. What happened to your parents?”

“They drove off,” the woman explained. 

“Yeah, but…they might drive back?” 

The woman shook her head, her eyes full of sorrow. “Everyone goes to the motorway in the end. I’ve lost them.”

“But they can’t have gone far. You could find them.”

The woman looked at him for a second, shaking her head, and with a sigh she pressed the patch to her neck.

“No, no—no, don’t!”

Too late. The woman’s grief melted away so suddenly, so entirely, that it was like it’d never been there at all. She smiled serenely, a vacant look in her eyes. Her voice was lighter, more feathery than it had been a second before, “I’m sorry, what were you saying?” 

“Your parents. Your mother and father—they're on the motorway.”

“Are they?” she shrugged. “That’s nice.”

Rose’s lips parted in disbelief. Impossible. That was impossible. She knew the kind of grief that woman had been feeling. The aching loss of losing one’s parents. She’d felt it after holding Pete as he died and after saying goodbye to her mother. It was not something you could just _get over_ in a matter of seconds. That—that… _thing_ , whatever it was, it had made her forget the grief, or her emotions towards her parents, or something like that. It was wrong.

“I’m sorry, I won’t keep you.” The woman gave them another smile then drifted away, seeming quite out of it. They watched her go.

“So that’s the human race five billion years in the future.” Martha sounded disgusted. Rose turned to look at her sadly. It was hard, she remembered, realizing how ugly things could be. “Off their heads on chemicals.”

If she hadn’t been looking, Rose wouldn’t have seen them coming. Two figures moved in the smoke behind Martha, approaching quickly, and her stomach clenched in alarm. She didn’t stop to think, diving forward to pull Martha back. She grabbed her arms, but her momentum caused them to swing around so when the two figures arrived it was Rose who found herself being grabbed from behind. Before she could react there was an arm was around her neck and she was stuck.

Martha screamed at the same time Rose gasped and the Doctor whirled around. His eyes locked onto hers for a moment before his face twisted with fury. “LET HER GO!” he roared.

“I'm sorry, I'm really, really sorry!” the man who was holding her said. “We just need three, that's all!”

“Get the hell off me!” Rose screamed, struggling against his grip. 

“I’m warning you— _let her go_!” the Doctor shouted.

“I’m sorry! I’m really sorry!”

“GET OFF!”

“Let her go! Rose! LET HER GO!”

Rose gritted her teeth, clenched her fist, and rammed her elbow into her captor’s stomach. She felt his grip loosen and she hit him again and was able to turn. She slammed her foot down onto his before breaking his grip and shoving him into the side of the rubbish bin. She darted past the woman into the safety of the Doctor’s arms. He her protectively for a second and then pushed her behind him. The two would-be kidnappers abruptly found themselves facing an angry Time Lord and on the business end of a sonic screwdriver.

“How dare you!” he shouted at them. The sonic screwdriver buzzed and the guns in their hands shuddered. They dropped them with cries of pain and the Doctor’s face twisted in disgust. “They’re not even real. Oh, that’s clever, but trying to snatch her definitely was _not_.”

“We’re sorry,” the woman sniveled. “Please, we only need three.”

“Three for what?!” the Doctor demanded, stepping closer and pointing the screwdriver at her.

The man put his arm between her in the Doctor. “No! Please, we didn’t—we just need three.”

“You’re not being very clear here, but I think you’re smart enough to understand what kind of trouble you’re in. You just threatened someone I care about and that is not a smart thing to do. So you better answer me now and you’d better tell the truth, because this is your one and only chance to save yourselves. Three. For. WHAT?”

“For the fast lane!” the man screamed. “What else?!”

“What’s the fast lane? Is that part of this motorway?”

“Y-you—how do you not know what the motorway is?”

“We’re from out of town,” the Doctor growled between his teeth. “Why do you need three?”

“To get access to the fast lane you have to have three adults onboard. No one we know is willing to go with us so—”

“So you thought you’d just come along and snatch Rose so you could get where you’re going a bit faster?” 

He was furious. Martha had thought she’d seen him angry when Shakespeare accused Rose of witchcraft, but now she realized he’d only been ticked off. This— _this_ was anger. Everything about him, from his expression to the way his fingers clenched around the sonic screwdriver, screamed of his fury at the two humans would _dare_ hurt Rose. Briefly, Martha wondered if she would ever find someone willing to defend her this way. The Doctor would kill these people, she realized, if they didn’t convince him otherwise, and Rose was just standing there, letting him.

“We would’ve let her go,” the woman assured him. “She could’ve come back once we got there. We wouldn’t have hurt her.”

“And you think that gives you the right to kidnap her?” the Doctor spat furiously, turning the screwdriver towards her. 

The woman flinched away and the man moved to shield her more with his body, but not before Martha saw her hands protectively cover her stomach. Her eyes widened in shock. The only time she’d ever seen do that was if she was hurt or—

“Doctor!”

“WHAT?”

“Doctor, stop it for a second! Just stop!”

The Doctor turned his head, teeth bared at frustration. Martha looked at him pleadingly. He exhaled through his nose, waiting. She held up her hands calmingly and walked slowly towards the sobbing couple like they were a pair of wounded animals. They inched away at her approach. 

“My name’s Martha,” she told them. “I’m a doctor. What are your names?”

“I’m…I’m Milo,” the man said after a moment. He was a tall bloke, though not as tall as the Doctor, light skinned with close-cropped dark hair. “This is Cheen, my wife.” She was just taller than Martha, with wavy brown hair past her shoulders.

“Cheen, are you pregnant?” Martha asked.

The woman nodded slowly, wiping the tears from her eyes. 

“Is that why you need to get to where you’re going quickly?”

She nodded again. “Yes. We…we only just found out last week. Scan says it’s going to be a boy. We—we couldn’t stay here.”

“Well, congratulations.” They both smiled. Martha turned to look at the Doctor who’d calmed slightly. “I think you can put that down, now, Doctor.”

“I thought you were the doctor,” Cheen said. 

“No, I’m a doctor. His name is the Doctor. Long story. But he’s not gonna hurt you now, is he?” She threw him a pointed look. 

Rose finally moved then. She took two steps forward and put her hand on the Doctor’s back between his shoulder blades. Martha watched a tiny ripple pass through his body and the Doctor exhaled loudly, lowering the screwdriver. His glare lingered on them for a moment then he turned around and pulled Rose into a firm hug, burying his face in her hair. He’d calmed down enough that she no longer feared for the couple’s lives, but his anger was still there, waiting. 

Martha let them have a moment, addressing the would-be kidnappers to draw their attention away. “That wasn’t very smart, trying to take Rose. You’re lucky I caught on about the baby. He doesn’t take kindly to people that try to hurt her.”

“We weren’t gonna hurt her,” Milo mumbled.

“And, we were actually going for you.” Cheen admitted. “She got in the way.” 

Martha had a good retort coming on, but just then the vendors seemed to realize the drama was over and no one was getting dragged off or murdered.

“Hey, you lot! You all want some Happy now?”

“I’ve got lots of Mellow! You could do with a bit of Mellow, I think!”

“Oh, put a sock in it!” the Doctor bellowed at them and the vendors, having witnessed the skinny stranger when he was angry, wisely shut up. 

He turned to Milo and Cheen, keeping one arm firmly around Rose’s waist. “You’re just trying to provide for your unborn child, is that it?”

Milo nodded. “Yeah. We’re heading to Brooklyn. Everyone says the air is so much cleaner there.”

“And you can actually go, well, outside.” Cheen added excitedly. “They say the sky is blue…and the sun is warm…and that the air smells like apple grass.”

“It does—wait, hang on.” Rose held up her finger. “You mean to say…you’ve never seen the sky?”

Cheen and Milo shook their heads. “No one has, not in our lifetimes anyway.”

Martha felt a bit sick at the thought. Never seeing the sky, not once in your whole life? Never feeling the sun? “You’re bluffing,” she accused. “That’s impossible. How could you have never seen the sun?”

“I’m not lying. Look,” she lifted her hair, revealing one of those mood patches on her neck. “Honesty patch.”

“You idiot! You’re pregnant and you’ve got weird drugs in your system?” Martha reached forward and ripped the vile thing from Cheen’s neck and the woman yelped quietly in pain. “Don’t use those while you’re pregnant. Your baby could come out with—with three eyes or something!” 

“That’s not as odd as you think,” the Doctor told her quietly. “You and Rose, you’re the only two pure humans alive today. Everyone else, all the hundreds of billions of humans alive all across the universe, they’ve all got a bit of something else in them, somewhere along the line.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope!” he responded cheerfully. “You lot, you’re compatible with almost anything. That’s why you’ve survived this long. Anyway,” his tone darkened. “There is something seriously wrong here. I need to hear the full story. Everything you know. And then, then, I may be able to help you get to Brooklyn.”

“What? Right here, right now?” Milo glanced around the street.

“Unless you’ve got some place better.”

“Our home,” Cheen offered. “It’s a bit small but we’ll all fit.”

“Then let’s go,” the Doctor said, unsmiling. 

Milo and Cheen picked up their fake guns and motioned for the three time travelers to follow them towards a door.

“Sure you don’t want some Happy?” the plump vendor offered to their retreating forms. “Then you’ll be smiling, my loves!”

The Doctor rolled his eyes and turned around, glaring at each of the three people in the stalls. “Word of advice, all of you. Cash up. Close down. And pack your bags.”

“Why?” she asked. 

“Because as soon as I’ve figured out what the hell is going on this planet—and I will—then I’m coming back and this street is closing. Tonight.” He gave each of them another look then spun back around and followed the group out. 

Milo and Cheen’s home wasn’t exactly what they’d expected.

“Welcome to car 4-6-5-diamond-6,” Milo gestured to the thing that resembled a train car. Cheen pulled a sliding door open in the side and motioned them in. 

The Doctor didn’t move, his arm around Rose. “I thought you said we were going to your home.”

“This is our home now,” Cheen explained. “When we decided we had to get away from here we sold our flat and all the belongings we didn’t really need to afford the car and our supplies.” She rubbed her hand up and down the side of the doorway for a moment. “Home sweet home.”

“If you try to take off with us inside, you’ll never reach the motorway,” he promised. 

They nodded and Milo climbed into the car. The Doctor followed, helping Rose and Martha in, then Cheen. “Sorry, you’ll have to stand or sit on the floor. I’m afraid there’s not much room.” Milo apologized from the driver’s seat. “It’s an older model. It’s all we could afford.”

Cheen started to shut the door but the Doctor stopped her. “I’d prefer if you left that open.”

She lifted her hands from the handle and backed away. “We’re not gonna drive off, honestly.” she huffed as she dropped into the seat next to her husband.

“You tried to kidnap one of my companions. I’m sure it’s not too hard to see why I don’t exactly trust you.” 

“We really are sorry.”

“Hmm,” he muttered, noting the various boxes they had piled in there. “You said you were heading to Brooklyn? Well, that’s not far. Why do you need all this stuff? What’s this…” he picked up a package from one boxes and looked at it. “Muscle stimulants?” he rummaged around a bit more. “Diapers? Baby clothes? …You couldn’t get this stuff when you get to Brooklyn?”

“Don’t be daft,” Milo laughed. “There wouldn’t be any point then.”

“Why? You’ve got at least six months, depending on how human you both are, until the baby comes. You should be settled by then.”

Milo and Cheen exchanged disbelieving looks. “They don’t know,” Milo murmured. “Oh my God, you really don’t know? About anything?”

“I know more things than you could ever imagine,” the Doctor told him. “But regarding what’s going on here and now, I know absolutely nothing and I’m really starting to get annoyed. Talk.”

“The Fast Lane makes the journey shorter, but it’s still ten miles travel.” Cheen explained. 

“So?” Martha tilted her head. “That’s not far. How long’s it gonna take?”

“About six years.” 

A beat of silence passed then the Doctor surged forward. “What do you mean six years? Why would traveling ten miles take six years? And hang on—you said you were gonna let her go when you got there. Do you mean to say you would’ve kept her for _six years_ in this tiny bin of a car?”

An angry Doctor and in a tiny space was not a good thing, and though she wasn’t to thrilled at the realization she might’ve been trapped in here for over half a decade, it wasn’t going to happen and he couldn’t punish them for something they didn’t do. Rose grabbed the Doctor by the hand and yanked him back between her and Martha before he could go off on a tirade or worse. “Doctor,” she said firmly. “Stop it.”

The Doctor met her eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, squeezing her hand, then looked at the couple in the front seat. “I haven’t been here in a while. Did you ever hear about a big incident at the New New York Hospital involving the Sisterhood?”

“Oh yeah,” Cheen nodded. “Everyone has. My cousin married one of those New Humans. Nice guy, a bit slow, but she loves him.”

“How long has it been since then?”

“About thirty years.”

“Okay,” he nodded. “So tell me everything you know about the past thirty years, the motorway, those mood patches…everything.” 

Milo and Cheen told him about the way things worked in the Undercity. The various areas like Pharmacy Town and Lower New Midtown; what passed for school; all about the mood patches. They were streetwise, both of them, but they didn’t know as much about _why_ the way things were the way they were. Like, they knew the walkways and flyovers were closed, sealing them off from the Uppercity, everyone did, but no one knew exactly why. Just like no one knew why the police never responded. If you called you were always put on hold. People had turned to citizen’s arrest or just sorting things themselves if they had to. Crime in the city was diminishing as more people went to the motorway, where the crime rates were escalating. 

“So…there’s not contact from the Uppercity? Ever?” Martha asked. “No police, no medics? No official broadcasts?”

“Well, there’s the news,” Milo said. “Sally Calypso’s always on time with the weather and conditions and stuff.”

“Sally Calypso? That woman on the screen?”

“Yeah, that’s her.”

“But no police?” The Doctor looked at the car’s communication terminal. “So if I were to ring them right now…I wouldn’t get anything?”

“They’d put you on hold.” 

The Doctor looked disturbed. “Since when do _police_ put people on hold?”

“Since at least twenty years ago, I’d wager.” Cheen leaned back in her seat, staring out the window. 

“Tell me about the motorway.”

And so they did. People wanting out of the Undercity hopped on the motorway and once they did, you’d probably never see them again. Which explained the woman’s behavior earlier. Dozens of ordinary lanes, only one fast lane—supposedly you could get up to thirty miles per hour down there! There were hundreds, thousands of cars on the motorway, all of them trying to get somewhere. Sometimes people would put on oxygen masks and stand on the laybys to watch the cars do nothing, make bets on how long it would take for something to happen, or talk to people in the nearby cars who risked opening their doors for a quick chat, possibly to ask for fresh food.

“Hang on,” Milo interrupted Cheen’s tale of the one time she’d been paid to fetch some food for a family in a car. He was looking at the clock. “Time for the daily contemplation, or thereabouts.” He turned the car on and the Doctor whipped out the sonic screwdriver. 

“Oi, easy!” Milo shouted. “I have to have the car on for the screen to work. Look, see?” The woman from before, Sally Calypso, was on screen and talking. He flicked a switch and the speakers hummed to life.

“—the sun is blazing high in the sky over the New Atlantic, the perfect setting for the daily contemplation.” She wasn’t as cheerful as she’d been before. A soft melody began to play over the speakers. It sounded vaguely familiar. “This is for all of you out there on the roads. We’re so sorry. Drive safe.”

Then Milo and Cheen started singing. From outside the car, from the speakers themselves, other voices could be heard as well—hundreds of voices, thousands, maybe millions—all singing the words of a song billions of years old, from Earth, together.

_On a hill, far away  
Stood an old, rugged cross  
The emblem of suffering and shame._

Rose knew the song. She’d never been particularly religious, though she and Jackie had been to church every now and then. Usually it was only for Christmas or weddings or occasionally just out of the blue. But she’d heard the hymn in service once or twice; she’d tried her best to sing well (if there really was a God, she didn’t want to offend him by singing off-key) and remembered her mum softly singing with her. She closed her eyes, imagining she could hear her mother singing along with these people now. The people of the Undercity, who, she was beginning to realize, were trapped down here.

Tears began to trickle down her cheeks. She looked at Martha and saw that she was similarly affected. The Doctor simply looked out the doorway, his expression neutral.

_And I love that old cross  
Where the dearest and best  
For a world of lost sinners was slain._

She could feel the Doctor’s body next to hers. She could imagine her mum was standing on her other side, just not close enough for touch.

_So I'll cherish the old, rugged cross  
Till my trophies at last I lay down  
I will cling to the old, rugged cross  
And exchange it some day for a crown._

The hymn ended, Milo shut off the car, and silence fell. Martha wiped away her tears with the back of her hand and eased herself onto the floor. The Doctor held Rose close as the tears continued to drip from her eyes, moved by the hymn and her response. He rubbed his hand soothingly up and down her back and gradually her tears stopped. 

“She apologized before,” Rose’s quiet voice broke the silence. “Why did she apologize?”

“We dunno,” Cheen murmured. “She apologizes a lot…but never says what for. Everything, I suppose.”

The Doctor’s voice ended the somber spell in the car. “I’ll take you to Brooklyn. You and anything in here you’ll need. Sell the rest, get your money back—we won’t be able to fit your car through the doors of our ship but you can buy a new one there. You’ll be seeing the sky before long.”

“You can actually get us out of here?” Milo asked. 

“Of course!”

“How?”

“Same way we got in.”

Cheen narrowed her eyes. “At what cost? How do we pay you?”

“You don’t have to,” the Doctor promised. “Just get packing.”

A shape appeared in the doorway, head down, dressed in all gray, and with a big gun over its shoulder. It started to climb into the car and Cheen screamed. The Doctor turned, raising his screwdriver in one fluid movement. 

“Don’t move a muscle!”

The figure froze then lifted its head. It was one of the Catkind—female, by the look of her. When her eyes found the Doctor they lit up and she smiled, both relieved and desperate at the same time. “Praise Santori! You’ve finally come back, Doctor! You have to come with me right now!”

“Do I know you?” 

“You haven’t aged at all,” she murmured in quiet amazement. She noticed Rose standing at the Doctor’s shoulder. “Nor you, Rose Tyler. Exactly the same as when I last saw you. Time has been less kind to me.” She looked down meekly.

“Oh my God,” Martha whispered. “She’s a _cat_.”

“Novice Hame!” the Doctor exclaimed suddenly, recognizing her. He shoved the screwdriver into his pocket and reached forward to embrace her, grinning for a moment, then his grin fell away and he shoved her back. “No, hold on, get off. Last time we met, you were breeding humans for experimentation.”

“She was doing _what_?”

“Are you one of them that created the New Humans?” Cheen asked, peering over the top of her seat.

“I…I was one of the Sisterhood,” Novice Hame admitted. “But I’ve sought forgiveness, Doctor, for so many years, under his guidance. And if you come with me, I might finally be able to redeem myself.”

“I’ll come later,” he told her. “I’m taking these two to Brooklyn.”

“Oh, but you can’t!” she cried. “There’s nothing there! Nothing anywhere but here, nothing but these people.”

“Are you referring to the lack of official authority for the last twenty years?”

“Twenty-four years, actually, and whatever they’ve told you, believe me, the situation is even worse than you can possibly imagine.”

He considered her for a moment. “Fine, but they’re coming with me.”

“I only have enough power for two.”

“Then I’m not going. I am not just leaving them here.”

“Oh, but you must!” 

“Go with her, Doctor,” Rose instructed. “We’ll stay here and help them load into to the TARDIS.”

“But—”

“Go.”

“Thank you, Rose Tyler.” Novice Hame didn’t wait, grabbing the Doctor’s wrist with one hand and pressing a button on her wristband. 

“Oi! Don’t do that—” the Doctor started to say and then they vanished into a burst of white light.


	13. The Face of Boe

The Doctor had rubbish timing sometimes. It wasn’t his fault, he hadn’t exactly had a way to contact them until then since he didn’t carry a mobile, but that didn’t stop them from wishing he’d come on the screen  _before_  they’d loaded all of Cheen and Milo’s stuff into the TARDIS and went through the whole bigger-on-the-inside spiel. Of course, they couldn’t really be too mad at him, because when monitor across the flickered to life, including the one in Car 4-6-4-Diamond-6, instead of Sally Calypso, the Doctor spoke to them.   
  
 _“Sorry, no Sally Calypso, she was just a hologram. My name’s the Doctor.”_  
  
Rose leaned into the car to see the screen.  
  
 _“And this is an order. Everyone on the motorway, drive up. Right now. I’ve opened the roof of the motorway. Come on. Throttle those engines! Drive up. All of you, the whole Undercity. Drive, up, drive up, drive up! Fast! You’ve got macra down below you and everyone down in the Fast Lane is depending on this. Drive up and get out of their way! Go up!”_  
  
“What’s he done?” Cheen asked, wide-eyed.  
  
“I think…I think he’s…given everyone a way out.” Rose said.   
  
 _“Keep driving, everyone! You’ve got all of New New York waiting for you. All of you! Come on, that’s it! Keep driving up! You’ve got a whole city up here, just waiting for you!”_ The Doctor grinned.  _“Car 4-6-4-Diamond-6, can you hear me?”_  
  
Milo picked up the transmitter on the dash and spoke into it. “Loud and clear, Doctor.”  
  
 _“Ah, hello! I think, perhaps, that ride to Brooklyn won’t be needed anymore–you’ve got all of New New York up here. I’m sure you’ll find some place to raise your family.”_  
  
Cheen and Milo looked at each other. She smiled and nodded. “Sounds good to us, Doctor.”  
  
 _“Excellent! I’m sending you a flight path. Get whatever you have back out of the TARDIS–not too much, I hope–and get up to the Senate as quickly as you can.”_  
  
Rose held out her hand and Milo handed her the transmitter. “We’re on our way!”   
  
Milo returned the transmitter to its place as Rose ran to unlock the TARDIS. This time the TARDIS decided to be helpful and a flatbed cart was waiting by their stuff. She didn’t even bother explaining where it’d come from. It took less than five minutes to get everything back into the car, Rose locked the TARDIS, and they were off, heading for the motorway where the Doctor had apparently given them a path to the surface.   
  
“Alright, here we are: the entrance to the motorway.” Milo said, pointing out the windshield. They were in a tunnel with a sign hanging down that read:  _Motorway — Junction 89_. Another car was cruising just ahead of them and thought she couldn’t see over it, she was sure there were more in front. The whole city has received his transmission; people would be going to see his miracle for themselves. They moved through the tunnel relatively quickly and within moments they were at the edge.  
  
“Let’s see just what your Doctor has done.” Milo pushed down on the gas and car 4-6-4-Diamond-6 sailed out of the artificially lit tunnel and into the sunlight.   
  
Cheen gasped and Milo’s said something the TARDIS didn’t translate.   
  
Around them were hundreds of cars, thousands of them, and the exhaust they’d produced for God only knows how long. Above them the gridlock that had once imprisoned them was wide open and the sky, the beautiful blue sky of New Earth, beckoned to them. Milo steered them upward, rocketing towards the sky with the other cars. The sunlight filled the car and all the occupants inhaled simultaneously as the felt the glorious sunlight touch them.   
  
Cheen and Meelo stared at it, completely enraptured at the beauty they’d never seen before, while Martha and Rose grinned.   
  
“It’s daylight!” Cheen murmured, tears rolling down her cheeks.  
  
“Yeah,” Rose sighed, “it is.”  
  
“Oh my God. That’s the sky. It’s the real sky!”   
  
“It’s beautiful,” Martha breathed as if she’d never seen the golden light before. In a way, she hadn’t. This was a completely new sun to her.  
  
With tears rolling down his cheeks, Milo looked away from the sky long enough to lean over and kiss his wife.  
  
Their journey to the Senate was full of laughter and tears. Martha was just as eagerly taking in the sights of New New York as Cheen and Milo. Rose had seen the city before so she stayed in the back of the car, perched on a box, and allowed the others to make the most of the limited viewing space. If Martha ever decided she wanted a proper look at the city they’d have to come back in about ten years. Give the people a chance to rebuild their government and establish contact with any survivors and other the nearby planets.  
  
 _And figure out why no one came before now,_ she thought grimly.  _A whole_  universe  _of people and no one thought to investigate New Earth going silent?_ There was something else going on, something worse, and as bright as things looked now, they weren’t completely out of it yet.   
  
The Senate of New New York was the largest, most impressive building in the city. Milo whistled appreciatively at the sight. They found a docking bay near the Senate chamber and landed. Milo and Cheen said goodbye then, wanting to get out there and find a place before all the good ones were taken. They exchanged hugs, left with a thank you message for the Doctor and promises that if they ever were on the planet again they’d look them up. Rose and Martha watched 4-6-4-diamond-6 fly off then they headed inside the Senate.  
  
Twenty-four years without care or maintenance had left the building in disrepair. Paint was faded and peeling, the walls were chipped and dull, a thick layer of dust covered almost everything, most the lights were broken, and there more than a few holes in the ceilings and floors. They maneuvered through the hallways carefully, following the signs to the chamber.   
  
“What’s it like?” Martha asked.   
  
“I’ve never been inside before,” Rose said, pushing through the curtains that lead into the chamber. “Last time we were here we were kind of busy and–”   
  
“What is it? Rose, what’s–oh.”   
  
On the dais in front of them surrounded by old wires and broken technology was a single mummified humanoid. Martha stared. Rose tore her gaze away from it and looked around the room. In the stands above the dais were dozens of mummies and skeletons, some of them human some of them not. Her breath was shaky as she exhaled and she knew, without a doubt, that this was how the rest of the Overcity looked. Probably the entire planet. Millions of people dead, their bodies doomed to rot where they fell with no one left to bury them.   
  
“Martha, Rose,” the Doctor called softly from nearby.   
  
“Doctor!” Martha cried happily, sprinting towards his voice. “What happened out there?” She stopped abruptly and her smile faded, replaced by a look of shock and horror.  
  
Rose crossed the room quickly to see what was wrong. The Doctor and Novice Hame were kneeling next to a large head with tendrils where there should be hair. She’d only ever seen him twice–once on Platform One and once when Cassandra possessed her–but she’d know him anywhere. She gasped, rushing past Martha.  
  
She stepped over a bundle of thick black wires and knelt down next to the Doctor.   
  
“What’s that?” Martha asked.  
  
“It’s the Face of Boe,” the Doctor explained. Martha swallowed and slowly walked towards them. “It’s alright, come and say hello. He’s the one that opened the Undercity, not me.”   
  
“My Lord gave his life to save the city. And now he’s dying.”  
  
Rose stared down at the Face of Boe. The ancient alien’s eyes were on her as well as he took slow, laborious breaths. This was the first time she’d ever been able to get close and really just look at him without being possessed. He was familiar, she realized with a pang. She couldn’t explain it but something about him was achingly familiar. It made her want to hug him and ease his departure from this life.  
  
“No, don’t say that,” the Doctor chided softly. “Not old Boe. Plenty of life left.”  
  
 _It’s good to breathe the air once more._ the Face of Bo told them quietly.  
  
“Who is he?” Martha asked quietly, kneeling between Rose and Hame.  
  
“I don’t even know,” the Doctor admitted. “Legend says the Face of Boe has lived for billions of years.” He looked down at Boe with a small smile. “Isn’t that right? And you’re not about to give up now.”   
  
 _Everything has its time. You know that, old friend, better than most._  Boe said.   
  
“The legend says more,” Hame murmured.   
  
“Don’t,” the Doctor said sharply. “There’s no need for that.”  
  
“It says that the Face of Boe will speak his final secret to a traveller.”  
  
“Yeah, but not yet,” the Doctor insisted. “Who needs secret, eh?”  
  
 _I have seen so much…perhaps too much. I am the last of my kind–as you are the last of yours, Doctor._  
  
“That’s why we have to survive, both of us.”   
  
Rose put her hand on the Doctor’s shoulder, squeezing it comfortingly. This did not escape the Face of Boe’s notice.  
  
 _Rose Tyler…I have lived for eons …met countless people…so many faces known and forgotten…but yours has never faded. You were there…at my beginning…I am glad…you are here now._  
  
Rose didn’t know what he meant–he was familiar, but she was sure she hadn’t been there when he was born, not yet at least–but she reached out and placed her hand on his chin. Her fingers tingled and she swore she could hear the singing in the back of her mind. A tear escaped her eye, trickling down her cheek. “Who are you?”  
  
 _You know the answer to that._  Boe took a deep, shuddering breath, and closed his eyes.  
  
“Don’t go,” the Doctor pleaded softly.   
  
Boe opened his eyes once more and they stared at the Doctor.  _I must. But know this, Time Lord,_  “You are not alone.”   
  
For a single moment the tingling in her fingers increased and she felt the power of Time itself race through them both and the song echoed through her mind. She  _knew_ who he was and she couldn’t believe it. She gasped, his name catching in her throat. He took one last raggedy breath and exhaled slowly, his eyes closing as he slipped into sleep eternal. The song faded, taking the knowledge with it. Lips trembling, tears trickling down her cheeks, Rose withdrew her hand from his face.   
  
It was like waking from a vivid dream and being unable to remember the details. She’d known who he was, but try as she might, she couldn’t recall the name that had been about to fall from her lips, nor the face that belonged with it, only that she had loved him.  
  
Rose looked up at the Doctor. He was confused and angry and stricken and more than a little bit lost. She placed her hand on his arm and without looking away from Boe, he shifted his arm so her hand slipped into his. He pulled her up and they backed away from Boe and Hame, who was sobbing bitterly. Rose curled into the Doctor’s side, unable to shake the profound grief she felt at Boe’s passing. The Doctor put his arm around her and when Martha leaned against his other side he slipped that arm over her shoulders.  
  
After a time, Hame’s sobs slowed and her shaking shoulders stilled. She wiped her eyes and stood up. When she spoke, her voice was hard. “Thank you, Doctor.”   
  
The Doctor nodded.  
  
“I will take care of him and the city as I have done these last twenty-four years,” she said as she walked towards them.  
  
“You have a choice, Hame,” he told her softly.  
  
Hame stopped in front of them. “Be that as it may, Doctor, if I do not, no one else will. Now all of you grab on.” She held out her arm and they each took hold. Rose looked at the Face of Boe one last time before Hame pressed the button on her teleport.  
  
It felt like every part of her being compressed into a single atom and pulled in every direction. She might have screamed if she’d still had a voice to scream with. It ended as abruptly it had began and she existed again. Rose groaned and lifted her head. Somehow they’d ended up on the ground in what looked like the Undercity. Yeah, definitely the Undercity–the Overcity was not this filthy.   
  
Martha moaned. “Oh, what was that?”  
  
“Teleport,” the Doctor growled, pushing himself up. “Not the best sort, either, but I guess with the world dead around you, you don’t exactly have the luxury of being picky.”  
  
Rose picked herself up on the ground and rubbed her recently healed arm. She must’ve fallen on it funny when they landed. The Doctor would probably need to give it another once-over with the sonic. Martha climbed to her feet and wobbled unsteadily for a moment then exhaled loudly.   
  
“Well, remind me to never teleport again. Oh, where are we?”   
  
“Exactly where I first found you.” Hame did not bother to rise. “I must return. Safe journey,” she bid them. “I do not know if we shall meet again, but may Santori be with you.” She pressed the button on her wrist again and vanished.   
  
The Doctor stared somberly at the spot where she’d vanished for a long moment then he was back to normal. “Right! Well, that’s New New York sorted. Back to the TARDIS!” He strode towards the door to the tunnels that would lead them back to the pharmacy stalls. Rose and Martha exchanged looks and Rose saw the questions building up behind her friend’s gaze. She shook her head pointedly before following the Doctor out.  
  
It seemed the three pharmacists had taken the Doctor’s advice and moved on. Considering that those Moods were the cause of their twenty-four year imprisonment, he doubted that any of the pharmacists would be in business much longer. Not unless they went back to selling actual medicines, anyway. He probably should’ve told Hame to make sure of that. Oh well, she was smart. She’d figure it out.  
  
“They’re gone. Must’ve taken you seriously.” Rose remarked.   
  
“Yep,” the Doctor grinned, peering into one of the abandoned stalls.  
  
“Happy?” Martha asked.  
  
“Happy happy.”  
  
She laughed quietly.  
  
“New New York can start again. And they got Novice Hame. Just what every city needs–cats in charge.”  
  
“So you like cats again, Doctor?” Rose asked.   
  
“No. We-e-e-ell–maybe a little. Come on, time we were off.” He jerked his head, stuffing his hands into his pockets, and strolled towards the TARDIS. Rose slipped her arm around his.   
  
“What did he mean, the Face of Boe?” Martha blurted out suddenly.   
  
They stopped and turned around. Martha stood in the middle of the alleyway looking melancholy and just a bit confused. “‘You are not alone.’”  
  
The Doctor shook his head lightly. “I don’t know.”  
  
“Shakespeare said you weren’t alone,” she reminded him, walking towards them. “You’ve got Rose. And me. Is that what he meant?”  
  
He shook his head again. “No, I don’t think so. Boe and Shakespeare are…well, I think they have different definitions of the word ‘alone.’”   
  
Martha looked a bit annoyed. “Then what?”  
  
“Doesn’t matter. Back to the TARDIS, off we go.” He turned again and started off again, looking straight ahead. Rose squeezed his arm comfortingly, knowing it would be better to wait until later to press the issue, and rested her head on his shoulder.   
  
Behind them they heard a metallic clink and they turned around yet again. Martha sat stiffly on a chair with her arms folded across her chest. She frowned at them with her eyebrows lifted and her lips pursed.  
  
“All right, you staying?” the Doctor asked.  
  
“’Till you talk to me properly, yes. He said ‘last of your kind.’ What does that mean?”  
  
Rose squeezed his arm again, looking up at his face. “Doctor,” she murmured.  
  
She saw pain flash in his eyes for a second before it was gone, hidden behind a mask of flippancy. “It doesn’t really matter.”  
  
“You don’t talk! Rose is the only one who’s bothered to tell me anything about–”   
  
Her voice died in her throat as the sound of a chorus reached their ears. Another ancient hymn from a faith so old she doubted anyone alive knew the true stories anymore. It sounded father away this time, from up in the Overcity as people fled from the catacombs in which they’d been imprisoned for the last two and a half decades and stepped into the sunlight.  
  
 _Fast falls the eventide_  
  
Rose felt her breath catch in her throat. “They’re singing again.”  
  
 _The darkness deepens.  
Lord, with me abide  
When other helpers fail_  
  
“Earlier, when you asked me about my planet,” the Doctor began softly.   
  
 _And comforts flee  
Help of the helpless_  
  
“I lied, ‘cause I liked it. I could pretend with you, Martha. Just for a bit, I could imagine they were still alive, underneath a burnt orange sky.” he swallowed. “I’m not just a Time Lord. I’m the last of the Time Lords. The Face of Boe was wrong. There’s no one else.”  
  
 _Swift to its close ebbs_  
  
Martha looked between him and Rose, shocked and more than a little appalled. “What happened?”  
  
 _Out life’s little day_  
  
The Doctor glanced down at Rose, looking for all the world like a lost child, and took a deep breath. “There was a war. We lost.”  
  
 _Earth’s joys grow dim  
It’s glories pass away_  
  
Martha waited for him to say more and when it became clear that was all he was going to say she frowned. “That’s it? Would’ve had to have been a bloody great war to wipe out an entire species.”  
  
“Not just my species,” the Doctor corrected. “Our enemy, a race called the Daleks, died too. Or so I thought,” he added darkly and exhaled through his teeth. “But not just us, oh no. Dozens of other species got caught up in the war and were decimated, their planets destroyed. And even some of those who didn’t fight in the war were affected. Their timelines broken, their planets and galaxies mutilated…some wiped from time itself. The universe used to be more populated than it is now.”  
  
He closed his eyes and rested his head on top of Rose’s, wrapping his arms around her. Rose slid her arms around his waist and gently rubbed her hand up and down his back.   
  
 _The darkness deepens_  
 _Lord, with me abide._  
  
Martha regretted even bringing it up now. “I’m sorry,” she said.   
  
The Doctor straightened up, leaving one arm around Rose, and smiled at her sadly. “Come on, back to the TARDIS. We can have a cuppa…and I’ll tell you both about Gallifrey.”  
  
Martha nodded meekly. “Okay, sounds good.” She stood up from the chair and followed them back to the TARDIS.


	14. Bonding

The next morning, or at least what counted as morning on the TARDIS, the Doctor breezed into the kitchen with a smile on his face. Martha and Rose were seated at the table eating breakfast. Oatmeal by the smell of it and there was a third bowl waiting for him with a cup of tea. They looked up when he pushed the door open.  
  
“Mornin’, Doctor!” Rose beamed.   
  
“You’re late,” Martha informed him, taking a sip of her tea. “We’ve been waiting ages for you.”  
  
“It doesn’t look like you waited.” He looked pointedly at her half-empty bowl of oatmeal. She shrugged. He sat down in his usual chair next to Rose and tucked in. She’d added banana slices, he realized with a grin.   
  
“So, you were saying?” Martha prompted and Rose re-launched into the story she’d been telling before he walked in.   
  
While he ate, the Doctor took a moment to study his two companions next to each other. They were so different, the two of them. Their clothing styles, their backgrounds, their education. Where Rose seemed loose, Martha was a bit uptight. Her family, her job, and her schooling tethered Martha to her time and planet while Rose had nothing holding her anywhere outside this box. Nothing except the friends she’d grown distant from.  
  
The Doctor took another bite of oatmeal and stared down at the bowl. That was his fault. He’d taken her from her friends and family. Not for the first time he wondered would happen to her if he was killed or they were separated. She could activate one of the Emergency Protocols to get her home but what would she do after that? Where would she go?   
  
“Doctor, is there any particular reason why you’re glaring at your breakfast like it just committed murder?” Martha asked.  
  
He looked up. “What? Oh, no, no, just thinking.”  
  
“Penny for your thoughts?”  
  
The Doctor smiled. “No, I don’t think so. Don’t like money, me. Some of the worst feuds in history were started because of money.”  
  
Martha considered this then frowned. “Well, then, how do you pay for all this food?”   
  
Rose made a noise and covered her mouth with her hand. “He sonics a money mover,” she said with her mouth full of oatmeal.  
  
Martha blinked. “You what?”  
  
The Doctor whipped the screwdriver out of his pocket and wiggled it back and forth. “Setting 228-A for money machines. Setting 228-B for credits machines.”  
  
“But that’s–that’s stealing!” Martha protested.  
  
He arched his eyebrow at her. “It’s not like I take it from anyone’s bank account.”  
  
“But you’re still taking money that’s not yours.”  
  
“She’s as bad as you were,” the Doctor griped to Rose.   
  
She shrugged. “And we’re both right.”  
  
“I don’t hear you complaining whenever I take you out shopping.”  
  
She shrugged again. Martha wasn’t impressed.   
  
“Oh come on,” he protested. “It’s not like I do it every day. Plus I’ve got a nice account sitting there from UNIT. I used to work with them a while back. If it helps, imagine the money’s coming from there.”  
  
“Why don’t you just actually withdraw from that account?”  
  
The Doctor wrinkled his nose. “Way too much time and effort. I haven’t touched it for…oh…” he exhaled. “Four hundred years? Give or take. I don’t even remember where I put the card–probably lost somewhere in that scarf. I don’t remember the pin number, either. It’s so much easier to just switch to 228 and go. Besides, I’d bet my thumb that the minute I access it UNIT will know and they’ll probably come to hunt me down.”  
  
“Why would they do that?” Rose asked in surprise. Whenever he’d spoken of UNIT he’d always made it seem like they were on good terms.  
  
“If you were a military organization dedicated to fighting hostile extraterrestrial forces, and planet Earth has now been openly invaded twice, wouldn’t you want to have me around again?”  
  
“Good point.”  
  
Martha dropped her spoon into the bowl with a clatter and leaned back in her chair. “Alright Bill and Ted, where are we off to today?”  
  
The Doctor’s eyes widened and he chortled, nearly choking on his oatmeal, while Rose stared uncomprehendingly. “Who?”  
  
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s an American film from the ‘80s. Basically it’s about two teenagers with a time travelling payphone who go gallivanting around the past.”  
  
Rose snorted. “Time travelling payphone? And I s’pose you had nothing’ to do with that, Doctor?”  
  
“Well…one of the writers may have heard stories of me an’ the Old Girl, I suppose. But other than that, no, I had absolutely nothing to do with that film. In fact, have issues with it,” he told them seriously. “Whoever wrote that had absolutely no grasp of the laws of space and time or temporal physics and mechanics. Plus, who in their right mind would just–just  _give_  a time travelling machine to a pair of idiots and then swan off?!”  
  
“Doctor–” Martha began.  
  
“I was well over a hundred before I was even allowed to  _touch_  a TT capsule, never mind use one, and even then I had to take multiple tests to prove I knew the controls, and when I actually flew one there were no less than three of my instructors breathing down my neck to make sure I didn’t blow up the universe or land us smack in the middle of a Sontaran battlefield!”  
  
“Doctor–”  
  
“Plus, the idea that a garage band would turn society into a utopia is completely–”  
  
“DOCTOR!”  
  
“What?” He frowned then realized the looks he was getting from his two companions and looked down petulantly.   
  
Martha huffed irritably. “God, if I’d known Bill and Ted would make you go off I’d have never brought it up. Remind me never to bring up  _The Terminator_  with him,” she told Rose.  
  
“Uh, you just brought it up.” Rose pointed out with a grimace. They both glanced at the Doctor, half-expecting him to start rambling about the temporal flaws in that movie, but he simply shrugged.  
  
“I like that movie,” he said once he’d swallowed his oatmeal. “Second wasn’t half bad, either. Third was–” he made a face. “Well, it was alright. Least it still had Arnold in it. But the fourth was just complete rubbish.”  
  
“There’s a fourth? When?” Martha asked.   
  
“2009.”   
  
“Do you have it in the library?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Then can we go and see it?”  
  
“I just  _told_  you it’s complete rubbish!”  
  
“So? I still want to see it.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“But–”  
  
“No!”  
  
“That’s not fair. Why can’t we go somewhere I wanna go this time?”  
  
“My ship.”   
  
“And here I was worried you two wouldn’t get along.” Rose said loudly, picking up her bowl and heading for the sink. They grinned sheepishly at each other. She came back to collect Martha’s bowl and mug and gestured at the Doctor’s half-eaten breakfast pointedly before returning to the sink.  
  
After taking another few bites, the Doctor said, “We’ve got something much more important to do today than watch great series being butchered. We’re already there, actually.”  
  
“I thought I felt us land,” Rose commented. “Where are we? No wait, correction: where do you hope we are?”  
  
He paused with the spoon halfway to his mouth, shooting her a look before he brought it all the way up. “You’ll see.”  
  
Ten minutes later the three of them were in the console room, waiting for the Doctor to double-check their coordinates. Martha leaned back against the railing and Rose stood on the opposite side of the console from the Doctor, drumming her fingers along the edge. The Doctor was staring intently at the screen.  
  
“I think this might be the first time I’ve ever seen you concerned about the possibility of your driving being off.” Rose remarked.  
  
“Yeah, well, last time I didn’t check at all, and I don’t want to make a habit of getting slapped by my companion’s mothers.”  
  
Rose tilted her head as what he was saying registered. “We’re in London 2008?”  
  
“Yep,” he replied, straightening. “By the looks of it.”  
  
“Home?” Martha asked curiously and pushed off the railing. “Why?”  
  
“Well, because Martha Jones, your trial run has officially expired.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Same thing I did with her: once to the past, once to the future, then back home. Now you’ve got to make up your mind: are you staying here or are you coming with us? Outside those doors is twelve hours after you left. If you decide to stay home it’ll be like you never left. If you decide to stay on board you’ll become a fulltime passenger.”  
  
Martha looked appalled at having such a momentous decision suddenly thrust upon her. Rose shot the Doctor a look that he didn’t catch.   
  
“Do I…have to decide now?”  
  
“No, of course not!” the Doctor said. “You can have all day if you want and you don’t have to spend it in here. Go on out there–go on. I promise we won’t leave.”  
  
Martha pressed her lips together for a moment. “Come with me?”  
  
The Doctor nodded to the door. “Lead the way.”  
  
She walked down the ramp and carefully eased the door open, looking around to see where they’d landed and half expecting to see the alleyway they’d left from. She blinked. “I’m home,” she said.  
  
“Good job,” Rose told the Doctor.  
  
“No, I mean, I’m literally  _home_.” Martha pushed the door open wider and stepped outside. “How did you know where my flat is?”  
  
Rose emerged from the TARDIS and looked around the room with interest. It was a lot Martha’s room on the TARDIS, down to the pattern on the bedspread. It was a bit untidy, but Rose’s room hadn’t ever been any better. There were plenty of medical textbooks on her shelf, plus a phone, laptop, and a telly.  
  
The Doctor emerged from the TARDIS. “Pretty simple, really. I just traced your home phone number. It was in your mobile.”  
  
“You went through my stuff?” she asked indignantly.   
  
Rose elbowed him sharply in the ribs and he winced. “Rude!” she chided. “I’ve told you before, Doctor, you can’t just go rummaging through our stuff whenever you please.”  
  
“Well how else was I supposed to know where she lives?”  
  
“I dunno, maybe you could’ve asked like a normal person!” Martha said exasperatedly.   
  
“Since when have I ever been normal?”  
  
They glared at him.  
  
“Alright, alright, I’m sorry,” he apologized, looking around the room. “But, hey, I got you home, didn’t I? Yep, look at the clock. Twelve hours almost exactly!”  
  
“So…all that stuff we’ve done–Shakespeare, Haven, and New New York?”  
  
“Yep, all in one night–relatively speaking. Everything should be just is it was–books, CDs–” he plucked a pair of knickers off the drying wrack, “–laundry.”  
  
Martha’s eyes widened and she snatched them away from him. This time Rose whacked his arm.   
  
“Ow! Abuse, this is!”  
  
“Hands. In. Your pockets.” Rose ordered.  
  
He opened his mouth to protest but she silenced him with a glare. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his suit and rocked back on his heels, sulking. Rose nodded, satisfied, and folded her arms.   
  
“I don’t know how you put up with him.” Martha told her.   
  
“Me neither.”  
  
Martha’s phone rang suddenly, startling all of them, and the answering machine picked up.  _“Hi! I’m out! Leave a message!”_  
  
“I’m sorry,” Martha apologized like she was expecting the worst.   
  
 _“Martha, are you there? Pick it up, will you?”_ An unfamiliar voice came through the speaker.   
  
“It’s Mum,” she said. “I’ll wait.”  
  
 _“Alright, then pretend that you’re out if you like.”_ her mother said irritably. They glanced at each other and sniggered.  _“I was only calling to say that you’re sister’s on TV. On the news of all things. Just thought you might be interested.”_  
  
Martha frowned and picked up the remote, pointing it at the TV. The news came on first thing. An older man that she didn’t recognize stood at a podium, addressing the press. Tish stood behind him, prim and proper, looking for all the world like a dutiful little employee listening intently to her boss, when in actuality she was probably thinking about last night or her party tonight.  
  
 _“The details are top secret–”_  the man was saying.  
  
“How could Tish end up on the news?” she wondered.   
  
 _“Tonight I will demonstrate a device–”_  
  
“She’s got a new job,” Martha explained. “PR for some research lab.”  
  
 _“–with a push of a single button, I will change what it means to be human.”_ Tish’s boss declared and then the press started shouting questions. Martha shrugged and shut the screen off.  
  
“Alright, so, um, say I do decide to stay.” Martha turned to the two of them. The Doctor tore his gaze away from the television and raised his eyebrows. “I’ve got med school to finish and my exams. Plus once everything settles down with the hospital they’ll expect me back in for residency. I can’t just skip all that.”  
  
“Well…” the Doctor tugged at his earlobe. “I suppose I could leave you here now and we’ll jump ahead, oh say, six months? Should be enough time for you to get all wrapped up.”  
  
“I suppose so,” Martha said slowly, though she didn’t much like the idea of staying here for six months. Traveling with them was addicting and she was already hooked. “What about you two in the meantime?”  
  
“Oh, we’ll just skip right over.”  
  
“That’s hardly fair.”   
  
Rose cleared her throat loudly and the two of them looked at her. She arched her eyebrows, crossing her arms over her chest, and nodded to the TV. “Was I the only one listenin’ to that?”   
  
“No, I heard him,” the Doctor said. “He said that–” His voice died in his throat and his eyes widened as the man’s words finally registered. “Did he just say he was going to change what it means to be human?”  
  
Rose smirked and nodded.   
  
“H-how–what– _what_?” the Doctor’s stuttered, his mouth opening and closing like a fish’s. “Turn it back on, Martha!”   
  
Martha jumped at the urgency his voice, snatching the remote from the table and pointing at the television. The Doctor crouched down in front of the TV. The screen flickered to life and they were greeted with a commercial about a new combo deal at McDonalds. He smacked the side of it in frustration, muttering about stupid ads and fast food. They sat through three minutes of boring commercials then the news was back on. They waited for ten minutes but there was no mention of that professor or his supposed revolution to humanity until the very end. There was to be some sort of gala event tonight at Lazarus Laboratories where Professor Lazarus would be demonstrating his mysterious project.   
  
“We’re going,” the Doctor said.   
  
“Tish’s got me an invite!” Martha remembered suddenly. “I don’t know how you two could get in, though…”  
  
“Psychic paper.”  
  
“Oh, right.”  
  
“So…does this mean we’re going to a fancy party?” Rose asked.  
  
“Yes, yes it does.” The Doctor said, his eyes twinkling.   
  
“Finally. I’ve been waiting for a chance to wear that dress.”  
  
“What dress?”   
  
Rose smiled slowly. “You’ll just have to wait and see.” To Martha, she added, “Do you have any dresses or do you need one from the wardrobe?”  
  
“I have my own.” Martha said, glancing towards her closet.  
  
“Well then go on and get pretty,” the Doctor ordered. “Meet us in the console room as soon as you can.”  
  
“But the party’s not for hours!”  
  
“Time machine.”  
  
“Oh, right. But, um, can you…move the TARDIS out of here? I can’t really get ready with a giant police box taking up half the space.”  
  
“Grab your stuff and just come on inside.” Rose said. “If either of you need me, I’ll be in the wardrobe or my room. And Doctor?”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“No peeking.” With another smirk in his direction, Rose turned on her heel and flounced into the TARDIS, the door swinging shut behind her. The Doctor watched her go.  
  
Martha chuckled quietly and he turned to her curiously. “What?”  
  
“You fancy her.”   
  
His eyes widened and he scratched at the back of his neck. “Well, I…she–she’s–I mean–she’s my friend.”  
  
“Oh don’t give me that.” She shook her head and walked over to her closet. “I’ve been around you for–what, three days? Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”  
  
“Noticed what?”  
  
She pulled open her closet and rummaged through for one of those nice dresses she knew she had somewhere.  
  
“Well, Doctor, let’s see. You’ve pretended to be a married couple twice and I didn’t doubt it for a second when we first met. In fact, I was surprised when she told me you weren’t. You kissed her at the hospital.”   
  
“That was a genetic transfer,” he mumbled.  
  
“She already had traces of alien life all over her.” Martha countered. She pushed aside a pair of trousers and exclaimed triumphantly when she found what she was looking for. She pulled the dress out of her closet and held it up for quick examination, then grabbed the matching heels and closed the doors.   
  
“And let’s not forget Shakespeare. He told you both you loved each other and neither of you corrected him.” she went on as she hunted for her makeup bag. “And when Milo and Cheen tried to take her, you were ready to kill them. I saw you, Doctor. You wouldn’t have just let them go if I hadn’t stopped you. And you wouldn’t have reacted like that if it’d been me.”  
  
She spun around, with her arms full of her dress, the shoes, her brush, a headband, and her makeup bag. “Plus just the way you two act around each other! And the way you look at her. You’re completely smitten.”   
  
He didn’t say anything, simply pushing the door open for her.  
  
“Right, then, if that’s how you’re going to be.” She lifted her chin and she stomped past him into the TARDIS. The ship seemed to be in agreement with what she had in mind because she found Rose’s room after only about a minute of walking. She kicked lightly at the door with her foot.  
  
“Rose? You in here?” she called.   
  
“Yeah, c’mon in!”  
  
“I can’t, my hands are full.”  
  
A minute later, Rose opened the door. She had her hair back in a loose ponytail and she seemed to be in the process of applying makeup. “What’s wrong? Has she hidden your door again?”  
  
“No, um, do you mind if I get ready in here? I wanna talk to you about something.”  
  
Rose shrugged, stepping aside. “Just dump your stuff on the bed.  
  
Martha walked past her with a smile, stepping over the discarded clothes on Rose’s floor. She dropped her load to the bed unceremoniously and grabbed her brush and makeup bag, heading to the bathroom after Rose. The blonde woman was already back to work, applying green eye shadow to her eyelids. She spotted a long, emerald green number hanging from a hook on the wall and inhaled. Rose glanced at her then followed her gaze.  
  
“That’s not too much, is it?” she asked.  
  
Martha shook her head. “Oh, no, not at all. It’s just…really pretty.”  
  
Rose smiled and shook her head. “I found it in the wardrobe a while back.”  
  
“If you’re going to be wearing that I might as well not bother dressing up.” She was only half kidding.   
  
“You could go poke around the wardrobe,” Rose offered. “I’m sure she’s got something in there that’d you’d love.”  
  
“Yeah but then I’d have to explain to Tish where I got it.” She shook her head. “I’ll tell you what, though, the Doctor’s not going to be able to take his eyes off you.”  
  
Rose went back to applying her eye shadow and Martha saw her smirk reflected in the mirror. Martha grinned and shook her head, setting the bag and brush down on the counter. The Time Lord would have no idea what hit him. She rummaged through her makeup bag and tried to decide what she’d need. She already had a bit of mascara and lipstick. She’d probably give herself another layer of mascara, plus some eye shadow, and blush, too.   
  
“So, what did you want to talk about?” Rose asked.  
  
“You and the Doctor. What is with you two?”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“Half the time you two act like you’re just best mates and half the time you look at each other like you want to shag each other’s brains out.”  
  
Rose inhaled through her nose, pressing her lips together, and when she exhaled she seemed to be smothering a laugh.   
  
“Really, though, it’s pretty obvious.” Martha told her, pulling out her eye shadow. She dabbed her brush into the gray powder. “You fancy him, he fancies you. So what’s the problem?”  
  
Rose set her brush down and sighed. “Everything and nothing, I guess. I…I love him, but…I dunno. Sometimes it seems like he doesn’t even really care about me at all.”  
  
“Rubbish,” Martha said immediately. “He’s smitten.”   
  
Rose laughed once.  
  
“No, he is! Completely! If you asked, I’m sure he’d give you the sun and moon.”  
  
“He did burn up a sun for me not too long ago,” she admitted.  
  
“He what?” Martha blinked in surprise.  
  
“So I could say goodbye to Mum in the other universe.”  
  
“Whoa,” she muttered. “How many women find a man willing to do that? Though, I’m surprised he hasn’t even kissed you yet.”   
  
“Oh, he has.” Rose said lightly as she applied a light blush to her cheeks. “But then he’d always go right back to being himself and pretending nothing happened.”  
  
“And have you tried to kiss him?”  
  
“Yeah, the very first time was my doing. He didn’t seem to mind at all.”   
  
“Then what’s the holdup?” Martha asked with a laugh, lifting the mascara brush to her lashes. “I could clear off for a day if you want me to. I can pick out like ten films and hide in the library while you two have a talk. I’m pretty sure the TARDIS would help seeing as she likes you both so much.”  
  
She set the blush down and smiled at Martha in the mirror. “Thanks, but the Doctor doesn’t really talk about things. He never has in the time I’ve known him. I have to really hammer at him if I want him to open up about anything. It’s just easier for him to run away. Always running…”  
  
“So you think he’d rather run from his feelings from you than face them? Oh yeah, Time Lord or not, he’s still a man. You’re probably going to have to take some initiative here, Rose. Though,” Martha eyed the dress, “that’s a good way to start.”  
  
Rose smirked again and lifted her eyes towards the ceiling. “An’ do you have anythin’ to say about all of this?”   
  
The background hum increased in pitch and the lights above the mirror flickered once.  
  
“Well, that’s that, then.” Rose sighed dramatically. “I s’pose I must now.” She turned around and plucked the dress off the hanger. “I’m going to get dressed. Hurry up, if you can. He’s probably already climbin’ the walls.”  
  
Martha’s laughter followed her out of the bathroom. She laid the dress down on her bed then went to her dresser, rummaging around the drawers for a strapless bra.  _I really need to straighten up in here,_ she grumbled to herself as she pushed the contents around. She found one near the back that would do and shoved the drawer closed.   
  
By the time Martha emerged a few minutes later she was already dressed and smoothing down the skirt in front of her mirror. Sometimes she was immensely glad that the TARDIS approved of her. She’d stumbled on this dress a few weeks ago, just before Canary Wharf, while roaming the part of the wardrobe for something to wear for their little holiday in 43rd century on a leisure planet. It’d just been there, gleaming invitingly under the lights and she’d known before even trying it on that it would fit perfectly. She’d been waiting for an opportunity to wear it since.   
  
The dress itself was made out of a material she didn’t recognize, something between silk and velvet–which either meant it was a fabric that hadn’t been invented yet in her time or it was alien. The bodice of the dress was ruched and held up by two thin straps over her shoulders while the long, sweeping skirt flowed from the waist, with a slit up to her thigh on the left side. It would look great with a nice pair of heels but considering that they would be in London and investigating such a radical claim, heels probably wouldn’t be a good idea. Rose Tyler was good at legging it but doing so in heels wasn’t something she enjoyed. So she’d chosen a pair of silvery gold flats instead.   
  
“Alright, turn around and let’s see.” Martha instructed. Rose smiled and spun around, the skirt billowing as she did. Martha pursed her lips thoughtfully, tapping her chin. “Hmmm.”   
  
“Well?”  
  
“Looks good. Really, there’s no reason I should even bother with a dress now. No one will be looking at me anyway.”  
  
“Oh, shut up,” Rose shook her head, smiling. “I’m not  _that_  beautiful.”  
  
“I think the Doctor will beg to differ.” Martha plucked her dress off the bed for examination. It decidedly simpler than Rose’s: dark burgundy, knee-length and sleeveless. “But, then again, I’ve got no one to dress for.”  
  
“You will one day.” Rose said matter-of-factly. “Just you wait. Soon you’ll have all sorts of men making eyes at you, kissin’ your hand, and tellin’ you that you’re the most pretty woman in the room an’ asking for a dance.”   
  
“Does that happen often?”  
  
“Often enough,” she admitted, her mouth twisting. “Drove the Doctor absolutely mad sometimes.”  
  
While Martha was getting her dress on, Rose went back into the bathroom to decide to do what about her hair. Leaving it down wouldn’t do with the dress even though that was the easiest option with it being so short. She grabbed the brush and started pulling her hair back. She decided on a chignon at the nape of her neck, with part of her bangs down framing either side of her face. Martha came in and started brushing out her own hair.   
  
“Whatchya think?” Rose asked. “Should I curl these or leave ‘em straight?”  
  
Martha looked at her considering. “Curl ‘em, definitely.”   
  
Rose nodded in agreement and pulled the curling iron she’d gotten during a jaunt to the 80th century out of the cabinet. Then, of course, she had to explain to Martha what it was because by that time the curling irons didn’t completely look like 21st century ones. The biggest difference was that hers had internal self-replenishing power sources and could be ready to use in thirty seconds. Jack had recommended the 80th century to her for hair styling tools.  _How_  he’d known that the 80th century had the ultimate breakthrough in hair care was a mystery, one she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted solved.   
  
“Can we stop there?” Martha asked. “I’d like to get my own.”  
  
“Ask the Doctor later on. If he complains, I’ll back you up, and the TARDIS will probably back me up. Then he’ll grumble about all us girls gangin’ up on him and drive us to the 80th century because he knows if he doesn’t the TARDIS will probably change course and take us there instead of somewhere he really wants to go.”  
  
The background hum lightened and Rose felt the ship’s amusement in her mind. And while Martha may not have felt anything in her own mind, she’d definitely noticed the change in pitch and guessed the TARDIS was agreeing. They both laughed loudly, thoroughly enjoying themselves.   
  
“Oh, God, would you look at me?” Martha said as she pushed her headband on. “I’ve never done this. Laughed and joked and offered beauty advice with someone my age.”  
  
“Never? Didn’t you have any friends?”  
  
“Well, yeah, but ever since I decided I wanted to be a doctor, I knew I had to make top grades. I mostly focused on my studies during secondary school. Almost no social life–Tish still gets on my arse about that–and any time I ever went out I usually got ready alone. This is actually kind of nice.” She smiled. “What about you?”  
  
“All the time,” Rose admitted, holding her hand above the curling iron to check if it was hot enough, then wrapped some of the strands around it. “Me an’ my mate Shareen, we used to always go out. We’d help each other with hair and makeup, talk about boys, look at boys, go around the shops, skip school–stuff like that.”  
  
“So while I was busy being a nerd…”  
  
Rose smiled dryly. “Yeah. But I come from an Estate. No one ever really expected anything of me and the teachers at school were only there for the pay. Unless you were one of those lucky few with an IQ over 120 then they didn’t care whether or not you passed. I hated every minute of it.”   
  
Martha couldn’t agree with her on that one–she’d always loved school herself, but she’d also come from a completely different background. She fixed her headband so it was on straight, smoothing down her hair in the back. “Done!” she proclaimed with a smile, slapping the counter with her hands.   
  
Rose slid the iron out of her hair and turned her head from side to side. She nodded, satisfied, and switched off the iron. She set it on the counter to cool and then followed Martha out of the bathroom. They slid their shoes on and Martha gathered her stuff in her arms. They stopped by her room so she could drop it all off then made their way to the console room.  
  
The Doctor was already there, of course, wearing in his dress suit and black tie. He started to speak when he heard their footsteps on the grating but he didn’t look up from the console. “It’s a good thing we have a time machine or, I swear, we’d be late to everything! Why does it always take you over an hour to–”   
  
He glanced up and the sight of Rose Tyler sauntering into the console room in that green dress caused his voice to die in his throat. The two women exchanged knowing, almost conspiratorial looks, and ambled further into the room.   
  
“Well, what do you think?” Rose asked lightly.   
  
The Doctor cleared his throat but his voice was a bit higher than normal when he finally said, “I…well…”  
  
Rose cocked her head to the side and lifted her eyebrows. “Yes?”   
  
“You look beautiful. B-both of you,” he added quickly and turned back to the console.  
  
Rose and Martha glanced at each other again, this time stifling laughter.   
  
“Shall we go then?” Rose asked, cocking her head to the side.  
  
The Doctor grinned, his eyes lingering on her. “Hold on, ladies!” He grabbed the lever that would send them off and grinned. “Here we go! Allons-y!” 


	15. Gala

It was nearing eight o’clock as the three time travelers strolled down the street towards Lazarus Laboratories. Martha’s heels clicked against the concrete and Rose’s skirt billowed in the breeze. The Doctor repeatedly fussed with the cuffs on his shirt and his tie until Rose stepped in front of him and they stopped so she could fix it.  
  
“Oh, whenever I wear this, something bad always happens.” he grumbled, lifting his chin so she could work.  
  
Martha shook her head. “It’s not the outfit, that’s just you.”   
  
“Thanks.”  
  
“But I think it suits you. In a James Bond kind of way.”  
  
“James Bond?” the Doctor asked scathingly. Rose finished straightening the tie and smoothed down the shoulders of his jacket. He smiled at her and they continued on their way, this time with Rose’s arm looped through is. Being compared to James Bond must’ve actually seemed like a good thing because he added almost hopefully, “Really?”  
  
Martha laughed.  
  
“Well, you’re certainly no Spock,” Rose said.   
  
“You’re right. I’m a lot better than Spock.”  
  
The front of the building was a great stone edifice with columns, arched windows, and a great door in the middle with  _LAZARUS LABORATORIES_ etched into the stone at the top. Two purple banners hung between the columns and a red carpet decorated the middle of the grand stone steps. A few members of the press waited behind a divider, snapping pictures of the guests as they strolled up the carpeted stairs. Behind the original stone building was a more modern looking structure with large glass windows instead of walls. From here they could make out dozens of computers and what looked like a small library, but nothing that really screamed of a research and development company.  
  
The small group of press noticed them coming and when they got close enough they began snapping pictures and asking for names. Martha turned her head away automatically, Rose gave them a friendly smile, and the Doctor chose to ignore them in favor of a more important topic.  
  
“If I’m James Bond,” he began as they mounted the steps. “I’m gonna need a theme song.”   
  
“Oh, yeah.” Rose nodded. “Definitely.”  
  
“Any ideas?”  
  
They thought about it and then Martha started humming the original Scooby Doo opening. Rose burst into laughter and the Doctor looked down at his newest companion indignantly.  
  
“Oi!” he cried.  
  
Martha smiled at him continued humming until they reached the podium where a man was checking for names on the invitation list. She took a deep breath and prepared a cheerful smile. When the man asked for her name she said, “Martha Jones. My sister is Leticia Jones, she said I had an invite.”  
  
The man scanned the list and nodded after a moment. “Yes, there you are. And you two?”  
  
“We’re with her,” the Doctor answered cheerily, pulling the psychic paper from his pocket. “I’m Sir Doctor and this is Dame Rose.” He flipped it open and held it up for the man to see. He peered at it for a second, glancing at the two of them, and bit the inside of his lip.  
  
“You’re only allowed one guest, luv,” the man told Martha. “However, I’ll make an exception just this once.” He waved them past.   
  
The little gala was in full swing on the third floor in a reception room with glass walls on two sides. The room was professional and aesthetically pleasing if one could ignore the tables of equipment and the hulking cylindrical capsule surrounded by four curved pillars sitting in the center of everything. The guests were milling around it, a pleasant hum of civilized conversation over the gentle music being played by a live string quartet. Serving staff with trays and smartly dressed photographers moved through the crowd, passing out hors d’oeuvres and snapping pictures of people and the great thing in the middle of the room.   
  
The Doctor eyed it with trepidation and Rose guessed he probably knew what it was on sight alone. She, however, had no idea what she was looking at. It was just another bloody  _thing_  that would probably cause them all sorts of grief because that’s the way things worked in their life.   
  
“This dress,” the Doctor said in her ear, causing Rose to start in surprise. She turned and smiled at him. He fingered one of the straps. “Where did you find it?”   
  
“The wardrobe. I was just browsing one day and there it was. I guess she knew I’d like it.”  
  
He smiled warmly at her. “You look beautiful, Rose.”  
  
“Considering I’m human, right?”  
  
The Doctor shook his head and murmured, “Considering nothing.”   
  
He noticed something out of the corner of his eye and his attention was drawn to a server with a tray passing them. “Oh, look, they’ve got nibbles!” he chirped, reaching out to snatch a few off the tray. “I love nibbles!”   
  
He handed one to Rose and popped another in his mouth without even bothering to check what it was. She rolled her eyes fondly.  
  
“Hello!” a feminine voice said behind them and Rose turned.   
  
“Tish!” Martha cried happily, hugging her sister. Tish took a step back and looked at Martha’s ensemble.   
  
“You look great. So, what do you think? Impressive, isn’t it?”  
  
She nodded. “Very.”  
  
Rose noticed the Doctor snag more nibbles from another passing tray and sighed. He blinked at her, completely oblivious, and she just shook her head fondly.  
  
“And two nights out in a row for you–that’s dangerously close to a social life.”   
  
“If I keep this up, I’ll end up in all the gossip columns.” Martha replied sarcastically.  
  
“You might, actually. You should keep an eye out for photographers. And Mum, she’s coming too–even dragging Leo along with her.”  
  
Martha’s eyebrows shot upwards. “Leo, in black tie? That I  _must_  see.”  
  
Tish seemed to notice Rose and the Doctor for the first time and glanced between them and her sister. Martha got the hint.  
  
“This is, uh, the Doctor and his, um, colleague, Rose.” She threw a quick glance at Rose, wondering if she should’ve gone with the routine husband/wife cover.   
  
“Hey.” Rose smiled at her.  
  
“Hullo!” the Doctor chirped, mouth full of food, reaching out to shake her hand. Tish shook it and smiled pleasantly.   
  
“Are they with you?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“But they’re not on the list. How’d they get in?”  
  
“They’re my guests. I know I’m only supposed to have one but they both really wanted to come.”  
  
“So,” the Doctor interjected, coming to her rescue. “This Lazarus bloke, he’s your boss?”  
  
“Professor Lazarus, yes. I’m part of his executive staff.”  
  
Martha rolled her eyes at her sister. “She’s in the PR department.”  
  
“I’m head of the PR department, actually.” Tish corrected haughtily.   
  
“You’re joking.”  
  
“I put this whole thing together.”  
  
“So, do you know what the professor’s gonna be doing tonight?” the Doctor interrupted again and Rose took the opportunity to snatch one of the remaining hors d’oeuvres from his hand. He didn’t even seem to notice. “That looks like it might be a sonic microfield manipulator.”  
  
“He’s a science geek. I should’ve known.” Tish glanced slyly at her sister. “Got to get back to work now. I’ll catch up with you later.” She smiled once more at her sister then strolled off, her heels clicking against the ground.   
  
The Doctor swallowed the food in his mouth and asked, “‘Science geek’ — what does that mean?”   
  
“That you’re obsessively enthusiastic about it.” Martha said.  
  
He grinned, liking the description. “Oh. Nice.”   
  
“She just called you a nerd, Doctor.” Rose pointed out.  
  
“There is nothing wrong with nerds, Rose Tyler. Some of the greatest inventions in human history are thanks to nerds. Now, let’s go and get a closer look at this, shall we? Ooh–I haven’t tried those yet,” he added to himself, watching another tray go by. He started after it but Rose held out her arm to stop him.  
  
“Ah, ah, Doctor. Focus. You check out the sonic micro-thing, I’ll chase down the tray.”  
  
“‘Sonic micro-thing?’  _Really_ , that’s the best you can come up with?”  
  
Rose rolled her eyes and pointed at the machine then hurried off to catch the serving girl with the tray.   
  
“Well?” Martha asked. “What do you think?”  
  
“I think she looks beautiful,” he said quietly, staring after her.  
  
“What?” Martha blinked and caught on a second later. “No, I didn’t mean about Rose. I meant about this bloody great thing.”   
  
“Huh? Oh! Right, sorry. Um…yeah…probably, a sonic microfield manipulator–I’d say about a ninety-five percent chance. A very crude model, but given the current time and technology, I suppose it’s not too shabby. But…” he trailed off, walking towards it. “What could he possibly do with this that would change what it means to be human?”   
  
“I dunno,” Martha murmured.   
  
The Doctor stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets and rocked back on his heels, staring intently at it. Martha alternated between looking at him, the machine, and watching for Rose to come back until a familiar voice called her name. She turned and saw her brother, Leo, wearing a suit and black tie as Tish had said, and on his arm was her–  
  
“Mum!” she gasped, hurdling towards her with her arms outstretched. She wrapped her in a fierce hug, never having been more grateful to see her mother in her entire life. She felt her eyes burn as tears threatened to build and she blinked them away quickly. It felt like it’d been ages since she’d seen her. There’d been moments when she’d been afraid she never would again.  
  
“Alright,” her mum said, cradling her head. “What’s the occasion?”  
  
“What do you mean? I’m…just pleased to see you, that’s all.”  
  
“You saw me last night.”   
  
 _Oh, God, it really_  has  _been only a day for her._  She tilted her head innocently. “I know. I just…miss you.” She shrugged and turned to her brother, tapping his chest fondly. “You’re looking good, Leo.”  
  
He chuckled, “Yeah, if anyone asks me to fetch them a drink, I’ll swing for them.”  
  
Unfortunately, Francine’s attention was suddenly preoccupied by the man standing behind her daughter who was watching their exchange too intently for someone just casually eavesdropping. “You disappeared last night,” she mused, eyeing the man.  
  
“I…just went home.”  
  
“On your own?” she probed, looking at her daughter disapprovingly, and glanced at the Doctor again.  
  
Martha groaned inwardly. She couldn’t put it off now that her mum had seen him. She just wished she could’ve introduced him and Rose together. She could only imagine what her mum was speculating. “This is a friend of mine, the Doctor.”  
  
“Doctor what?”  
  
“No, it’s just the Doctor. We’ve been doing some work together.”  
  
“Yeah, alright?” Leo reached out to shake his hand and the Doctor returned the gesture with a friendly smile.   
  
“Lovely to meet you, Mrs. Jones,” he said, shaking her hand as well. “Heard a lot about you.”  
  
“Have you?” she asked coolly. “What have you heard, then?”   
  
Rose couldn’t have timed her return more perfectly if she’d tried. She strolled up, her hands cupped around a few little delicacies with she promptly held out to the Time Lord whom she had unwittingly just saved from what had promised to be an awkward conversation. “Here you are, then, Doctor. Oi, only one of each, the others are ours.”   
  
The Doctor took two and looked them over curiously. “Oh, look, this one’s got a banana slice in it! That’s brilliant.” He tossed it into his mouth, grinning as he chewed.  
  
Rose held out her hands to Martha so she could take her two and flashed a bright smile at Francine. “Hello! You must be Martha’s mum! And her brother, Leo–right? I’d shake your hand but mine aren’t free at the mo.”   
  
“And who might you be?” Francine asked, her eyes narrowing further.   
  
Rose gave her one of her brightest smiles, the kind that usually won people over. “Oh, I’m Rose Tyler. Nice to meet you.”   
  
“Are you a friend of my daughter’s as well?”  
  
“Yeah, I’d like to think so. She’s been helpin’ us with our work.”  
  
“She’s absolutely brilliant,” the Doctor added with his mouth full of food.  
  
“Oh?” Francine arched one eyebrow. “And what sort of work do you do?”  
  
They were saved from having to answer by someone tapping a glass with a spoon to call attention. “Ladies and gentlemen!”  
  
They all turned to face Professor Lazarus who stood in front of the capsule as the lights went dim. The murmur of voices died, the music faded, and cameras clicked and flashed.  
  
“I am Professor Richard Lazarus, and tonight I am going to perform a miracle. It is, I believe, the most important advance since Rutherford split the atom, the biggest leap since Armstrong stood on the moon. Tonight, you will watch and wonder. Tomorrow, you’ll awake to a world which will be changed forever.”  
  
Rose and the Doctor glanced at each other nervously. His eyes were hard and hers were a tiny bit afraid.   
  
Lazarus turned and pulled open the door to the cylindrical capsule and stepped inside. Cameras continued to click and flash, capturing this momentous moment, and stopped only when he shut the door behind him. The lab assistants moved about behind the tables, flipping switches and pressing buttons, and the machine flared to life with a high-pitched whine and a near-blinding white light. Everyone flinched. People moved to shield their eyes, Rose included, and the whine increased.  
  
The four pillars stretched upward and started to rotate, moving in a circle around the capsule. An energy field began to build up, light flashing and crackling within. Faster and faster the pillars rotated, the hum of the machine combining with the whirl of the air being stirred up within. Rings of light shot up the capsule and what looked like a ball of water was building up at the top, spilling downward. Light flashed and crackled. Only the Doctor stood firm in it all.   
  
Then a klaxon began to blare.   
  
 _Not good!_ Rose thought, shielding her eyes against a particularly painful flash of light. “Something’s wrong. It’s overloading!” She heard the Doctor shout. The building around them began to shake and people cried out in alarm and terror.  
  
The technicians tried to shut it down but the equipment was exploding around them. The Doctor hurdled over the tables, whipping out his sonic screwdriver. Rose nearly toppled over when another tremor shook them but Leo caught her by the arms. She saw Martha and her mother clinging to each other for support and she met Martha’s terrified gaze for a moment before whipping her head around to look for the Doctor. His face was intense as he worked to shut the machine down.   
  
An old woman screamed for someone to stop him.  
  
“If this thing goes up, it’ll take the whole building with it!” the Doctor shouted back at her. “Is that what you want?!”  
  
The water was spilling over the capsule now and the pillars whizzed around it faster than ever. The machine crackled and whined. The Doctor leaped over the table again and with an almighty yank, he ripped a thick black chord from the back of one of the controls and the machine slowed to a stop. The light stopped flashing, the water disappeared as the energy field dissipated, and the pillars slowed to a stop, returning to their original positions.   
  
Martha pulled away from her mother and ran up to the capsule at the same time the Doctor rounded it, shouting, “Get it open!”   
  
Rose felt Leo release her arms and she darted over to the Doctor as Martha wrenched the door of the capsule open. The crowd drifted forward. Through the smoke, a figured emerged. The cameras flashed wildly, capturing the image of the man that stood before them. He had to be only thirty, thirty-five at best. Young, handsome, and blonde–nothing like the old man who had stepped inside the capsule just minutes ago. He looked at his hands and touched one to his face in amazement. He laughed then emerged fully from the capsule and stood proudly in front of his machine.  
  
“Ladies and gentlemen…I am Richard Lazarus. I am 76 years old…and I am reborn!” he shouted, spreading his arms wide over his head in triumph.   
  
Photographers snapped photos wildly and people cheered and applauded at the miracle they had witnessed. A human being had successfully defied the laws of nature and turned back his biological clock. If Rose hadn’t seen it herself she wouldn’t have believed it. She still almost didn’t believe it, except that when she looked at the Doctor’s face, she saw an expression of foreboding that spoke volumes. Lazarus descended into the crowd and they welcomed him like a hero. Everyone wanted to shake his hand, to talk to him, to have his or her photo taken with him: the old man who became young again.   
  
Francine and Leo were lost with the crowd, or perhaps they just went to find Tish. Which was perfectly fine with Martha. It gave the Doctor a chance to examine the machine without being harassed by her mother. He couldn’t do much more than look at the exteriorly visible mechanics since attempting to disassemble it, scan it with the screwdriver, or lick it would get him promptly hauled off.   
  
“That can’t be the same guy,” Martha said to Rose. “That’s impossible. It must be a trick.”  
  
“I don’t think so,” she replied.  
  
“It’s not,” the Doctor agreed. “I wish it were.”  
  
Martha turned to face them. “What just happened, then?”  
  
The Doctor inhaled through his teeth, watching Lazarus getting his picture taking. “He just changed what it means to be human.”  
  
Rose sighed. “Well…considering all the things he could’ve done, this isn’t that bad, right?”  
  
The Doctor looked at her gravely. “Maybe. Or maybe it’s far worse than we know. To do what he’s done…he’s been altered at the molecular level. Human beings shouldn’t be playing with their genes–not in this century or the next–and especially not at his stage in life. In 23rd century they produce the first genetic altering apparatus. It allows parents to choose what generic traits their child will display while it’s still in the womb. The gender they have no control over, but they can pick hair color, eye color, and even metabolism levels from their potential genes. Remarkable technology but that’s the earliest form of reliable genetic altercations and it’s only safe during the first trimester. After that and, well, you could’ve asked for a ginger and wound up with your baby having orange skin and blood red hair.”  
  
He shook his head, his eyes following Lazarus’ progression through the room the way anyone would watch a poisonous snake. “This kind of thing won’t be possible for several million years and even then it’s only successfully halts your aging for about two to five years and if anyone does it more than once a decade they usually end up regressed entirely to an infant…or they’re aged to a husk.” he added, shrugging. “It’s tricky business, messing with DNA.”  
  
“What about Cassandra?” Rose asked. “She was over two thousand years old, wasn’t she?”  
  
He made a face. “Well, yeah, but she was also born billions of years in the future. By then anti-aging is practically child’s play, if you can afford it. In some societies anti-aging procedures start when you turn five. You don’t become an adult until you’re fifty.”  
  
“Hey,” Martha snapped her fingers in front of his eyes. The Doctor frowned at her crossly. “Save the lectures for later and focus, thank you. What are we going to do about him?”  
  
The Doctor took a deep breath and his cheeks puffed out as he exhaled. “Well, first we find out how much he knows about what he’s done. Come on.”  
  
They’d lost sight of Lazarus when Martha drew their attention to her so they circled the room, looking for the thick cluster of people that he’d had around him. Instead they found him off to the side with an old woman and a tray in his hand, shoving one snack after the other into his mouth.  
  
“I’m famished!” they heard him say.  
  
“Energy deficit,” the Doctor explained and Lazarus turned in surprise. “Always happens with this kind of process.”   
  
“You talk as if you see this every day, mister…”  
  
“Doctor. And, well, no, not every day, but I have some experience in this kind of transformation.”  
  
Rose nearly snorted.   
  
Lazarus’s smile was a bit frosty. “That’s not possible.”  
  
“Using hypersonic sound waves to create a state of resonance,” the Doctor said. The total  _what the hell_  look on Lazarus’s face would’ve been funny if the situation weren’t so serious. “That’s–that’s inspired.”  
  
Lazarus’s expression was guarded. “You understand the theory, then.”  
  
“Enough to know that you couldn’t possibly have allowed for all the variables.”  
  
He regarded him somewhat disdainfully for a moment and then lifted another bite from the tray. “No experiment is entirely without risk.”  
  
“That thing nearly exploded,” the Doctor said as Lazarus sucked the remains off his thumb. “You might as well have stepped into a blender.”  
  
The woman frowned, shaking her head slightly. “You’re not qualified to comment.  
  
“If I hadn’t stopped it, it would have exploded.”   
  
“Then I thank you, Doctor.” Lazarus tilted his head in gratitude. “But that’s a simple engineering issue. What happened inside the capsule was exactly what was supposed to happen. No more, no less.”  
  
Rose laughed once without humor. “You sure about that, mate?” she asked, her East End accent so glaringly obvious among the posh, cultured tones around her.  
  
“You’re even less qualified.” the woman snapped, lifting her nose.   
  
Her eyes hardened. “An’ what makes you say that?” She knew damn well what the woman was thinking. Rose just wanted to hear what she’d come up with.  
  
“She’s right, though.” Martha cut in before Rose’s temper could really get going or the Doctor’s expression got any darker. “You have no way of knowing that until you’ve run proper tests.”  
  
Lazarus laughed at their worries. “Look at me. You can see what happened. I’m all the proof you need.”   
  
“This device will be properly certified before we start to operate commercially,” the woman said to reassure them.   
  
“Commercially?!” Martha exclaimed. “You are joking. That’ll cause chaos.”  
  
“Not chaos–change,” Lazarus corrected evenly. “A chance for humanity to evolve, to improve.”  
  
The Doctor was glaring at him now. “This isn’t about improving. It’s about you and your customers living a little longer.”  
  
“Not a little longer, Doctor–a lot longer. Perhaps indefinitely.”  
  
“Richard, we have things to discuss. Upstairs.” The woman gave the trio another look and walked away.   
  
“Goodbye, Doctor,” Lazarus bid with a wave. He stopped, spinning on his heel, and added superiorly, “In a few years, you’ll look back and laugh at how wrong you were.”   
  
He held out his hand to Martha who took it automatically, though her face wrinkled in disgust when he bent to kiss it. He moved to take Rose’s hand as well but she just arched her eyebrow, completely unimpressed. He smiled politely and walked way.  
  
“Ooh, he’s out of his depth.” the Doctor murmured when he was out of earshot. “He has no idea of the damage he might have done.”  
  
“So what do we do now?” Martha asked.   
  
“You mean besides go after that old cow and rip her a new one?” Rose asked through her teeth.   
  
“As appealing as that sounds, we do have more important things at the moment.” The Doctor looked around. “This building must be full of laboratories. I say we do our own tests.”  
  
“Lucky I’ve just collected a DNA sample then, isn’t it?” Martha asked, holding up the hand Lazarus kissed and wiggled her fingers.   
  
“Oh!” The Doctor beamed her. “Martha Jones, you’re a star!”  
  
Martha shrugged one shoulder like it was no big deal. She followed the Doctor and Rose towards a side door feeling quite proud of herself.   
  
Francine Jones watched them go, noting the formation they fell into: him in the front with the two girls following at either shoulder. Flanking him. That–that Doctor man, she didn’t like or trust him. There was just something about the way they looked at him and followed his orders without question. Martha had never blindly obeyed someone. She’d always been too smart for that. But all of the sudden it seemed that the Doctor said ‘jump’ and she asked ‘how high?’   
  
And that blonde woman, Rose–she dressed nice but the way she curved her vowels and chopped off the ends of her words gave her away. She was probably just some low class chav that he’d picked up, the way Clive had picked up Annalise.   
  
 _What if she isn’t the only one?_ Francine thought with alarm. Was Rose just the one he brought along tonight? How many others were there? Did this Doctor plan to add her daughter to his harem?   
  
Well, not if she had anything to say about it. 

 


	16. Falls the Shadow

Rose pinched the bridge of her nose, leaning with her back against the counter. She’d been silently listening to the two people with knowledge about molecular structures talk back and forth about the old-ish man with funky DNA, unable to provide any decent input, and just barely following along. They kept firing off terms she might have learnt once years ago when she was in school and then promptly forgot, and some she was sure she’d never heard outside one of the Doctor’s ramblings.  
  
“So, let me get this straight.” she interrupted, needing some clarity. “He hacked into his DNA like computer and told them to wind back the clock?”  
  
“Yep, looks like,” the Doctor said. “This kind of thing has never succeeded. In the future they manage to slow aging but never reverse it. Not in humans, anyway.”  
  
“And his genes are still mutating now.” Martha pointed out.  
  
“Why?” Rose asked. “He’s young again. Is he going to keep getting younger ‘til he’s a baby?”  
  
“No,” the Doctor murmured, watching the screen register another mutation. “He missed something in his tests. Something in his DNA has been activated and won’t let him stabilize. Something that’s trying to change him.”  
  
“Fantastic,” Rose muttered. “This day just keeps getting better and better and we haven’t even had lunch yet. What’s he going to change into, Doctor?”  
  
“I dunno but I think we need to find out.”  
  
“Well, the cow said they were going upstairs.”   
  
“Then let’s go!”   
  
Leaving the computer up–perhaps as a warning to anyone who happened along–the Doctor loped out of the lab. Things had barely started and they were already running and Martha was regretting choosing to wear heels. She was beginning to understand why Rose chose to wear trainers, boots, and flats. You just never knew when you’d have to start running when you traveled with the Doctor. The lift was waiting for them when Rose pressed the button. They rode up to the next floor then had to switch to another elevator that would take them to the executive offices.   
  
Lazarus’s office was on the very top floor. The elevator opened to a large dark room. The Doctor pressed a button on the wall and the lights came up, revealing a professionally furnished room that must’ve encompassed almost the entire floor. Several screens displayed the company’s logo decorated the walls, along with several photographs and the desk on the far side had a small statue on it.   
  
“This is his office, alright,” Martha muttered.  
  
“So, where is he?” the Doctor wondered.  
  
Rose shrugged. “Maybe he and the cow popped out for a quick fag.”  
  
“No.” He shook his head. “He’s a smart man. Even if he smokes he’d no better than to introduce harmful substances to his body so soon after that kind of process.”  
  
“Must’ve gone back down to the re…ception.” Martha’s voice hitched and the Doctor looked at her in alarm. Rose gasped when she noticed the skeletal pair of legs wearing heels poking out from behind the desk. The Doctor followed their horrified gazes then they rushed over to shrunken remains of a finely dressed woman.   
  
Rose put her hand over her mouth and Martha gasped. The Doctor kneeled down by the corpse.  
  
“Is that Lady Thaw?” Martha asked, kneeling as well.  
  
“Used to be,” the Doctor said grimly. Rose made a face but remained standing. She’d had no fondness for the woman but she hadn’t wanted anything like this to happen to her. A nice verbal lashing would’ve been sufficient. Maybe a cup of ice water or wine dumped on her head. But not this.  
  
“Now she’s just a shell,” he went on. “Had all the life energy drained out of her… Like squeezing the juice out of an orange.”  
  
“Did he do this?” Rose asked.  
  
“Could be.”  
  
Martha’s eyes were wide. “So he’s changed already?”   
  
“Not necessarily. You saw the DNA. It was fluctuating. The process must demand energy. This might not have been enough.”  
  
“He’s gonna do this again?” Rose half-yelled. “What are we standin’ here for then, c’mon!”  
  
They left Lady Thaw where she was. She could be dealt with later. Right now they had several dozen living people who had no idea how much danger they were in to worry about, including Martha’s family. Down the private lifts and around to the public ones, Martha pressed the call button half a dozen times in her hurry. The lift arrived and they clamored in, the doors shutting just before the adjacent lift opened and deposited its two passengers. The moment the reception room became visible through the clear elevator walls, Martha, Rose, and the Doctor moved to different sides of the elevator to scan for Lazarus. The door opened and they walked briskly out past the food tables and string quartet into the crowd.  
  
“I can’t see him.” Martha said.  
  
“Nor me,” added Rose.   
  
“He can’t be far.” The Doctor craned his neck to see over the heads. “Keep looking.”   
  
“Hey, you all right, Martha?” Her brother Leo stood near the machine with a wine glass in his hand and an amused look on his face. Martha stopped in front of him and Rose, realizing she’d stopped, paused as well. “I think Mum wants a word with you.”  
  
“Have you seen Lazarus anywhere?” Martha asked him. The Doctor turned and walked back towards them.   
  
“Yeah, well, he was getting cozy with Tish a couple of minutes ago.”  
  
Rose’s face twisted in disgust. “Oh, that’s just gross.”  
  
“With Tish!” Martha told the Doctor frantically just as her mother arrived.   
  
“Aaahh, Doctor–” she began but he cut her off.  
  
“Where did they go?” he demanded.   
  
“Upstairs, I think. Why?” Leo said and the Doctor was moving before he even finished speaking. He pushed past Francine, spilling her drink on her, and made for the lift.  
  
“Doctor–I’m speaking to you!” Francine shouted after him as both girls rushed past her.  
  
“Not now Mum!” Martha hissed over her shoulder.   
  
The ride back upstairs seemed to take forever and no time at all. Marta shifted her weight from foot to foot, her hands curling and uncurling in agitation, and she shook with barely restrained terror. A thousand terrible thoughts ran through her head. What if they were too late? What if he’d already killed her? What would Tish look like as a desiccated corpse? What would she say to her Mum? How could she tell her Mum?   
  
The Doctor put his hand on her shoulder to steady her and she nearly jumped out of her skin. When the lift arrived at Lazarus’s office they were scrambling through before the doors had even fully opened. Martha looked around wildly for any sign of her sister or Lazarus but the office was empty.   
  
“Where are they?” she cried.   
  
The Doctor reached into his jacket and withdrew his sonic screwdriver. “The fluctuating DNA will give off an energy signature. I might be able to pick it up.” He adjusted the setting and flicked it on. The tiny sonic device pulsed to life and he slowly scanned the room. It started beeping, faster and faster, and he lifted his arms. “Got it.”   
  
He was pointing to the ceiling.  
  
“But this is the top floor!”  
  
“They’re on the roof.” Rose realized. The three of them exchanged horrified looks, the Doctor shoving the sonic back into his jacket, and they made a beeline for the stairs.   
  
They practically flew up the stairs. Martha snarled threats under her breath about what she’d do if that madman had hurt her sister. Rose and the Doctor silently agreed to help her or at the very least let her. They slowed to halt just in front of the door outside. The Doctor held a finger to his lips, motioning for them to be silent. It was probably best not to burst out there in case spooking Lazarus somehow set him off.   
  
He eased the door open and they quietly crept out onto the roof, shutting the door as quietly as possible. Tish and Lazarus were standing with their backs to the door. Tish was asking him if it was like he’d expected and, thankfully, didn’t appear to be hurt.   
  
“I find that nothing’s ever exactly like you expect.” Lazarus replied evenly. “There’s always something to surprise you…. ‘Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act–’”  
  
“‘Falls the shadow’,” the Doctor finished, effectively announcing their presence.  
  
They turned, Lazarus’s eyebrows lifting in mild surprise. “So the mysterious Doctor knows his Eliot. I’m impressed.” He smiled darkly.  
  
“Martha, what are you doing here?” Tish asked.   
  
“Tish, get away from him.” Martha ordered.  
  
“What? Don’t tell me what to do.”   
  
“Wouldn’t have thought you had time for poetry, Lazarus,” the Doctor said. “What with you being so busy defying the laws of nature.”  
  
“You’re right, Doctor.” Lazarus agreed. “One lifetime’s been too short for me to do everything I’d like. How much more I’ll get done in two or three or four.”  
  
“Doesn’t work like that. Some people live more in twenty years than others do in eighty. It’s not the time that matters. It’s the person.”  
  
“But if it’s the right person,” he countered, “What a gift that could be.”  
  
“Or what a curse.” The Doctor’s voice lost its edge and became soft, pleading with Lazarus to see why this was wrong. “Look at what you’ve done to yourself.”  
  
But he only managed to make the man angry. “Who are you to judge me?”   
  
“Over here, Tish,” Martha beckoned, motioning to her sister to come, which she did, thankfully.   
  
“You have to spoil everything, don’t you?” Tish demanded. “Every time I find someone nice, you have to try and find fault.”  
  
Behind them, Lazarus’s mouth opened, his face lifting like he was about to sneeze, and he sucked in a breath.  
  
“Tish, he’s a monster!” she exclaimed, looking behind her sister.   
  
He grunted in pain as his back arched, his arms curving, and crumpled to the ground.  
  
“I know the age things a bit freaky but it works for Catherine Zeta-Jones.” Only then did she seem to realize that none of them were looking at her. An inhuman growling caused her to turn. Tish wasn’t exactly sure what she’d expected to see but it wasn’t what she  _that_.  
  
Rose thought it wasn’t unlike watching the man transform into the werewolf in the cellar of the Torchwood Estate, just a lot more disturbing. His body was contorting into something inhuman, skin stretched, ripped, mended itself in some places and didn’t in others. Limbs lengthened and reshaped, new ones appeared in places they shouldn’t. Every single one of his ribs was visible above a gaping hole where his guts should be. A long armored tail extended from his back. The end effect was a monstrous scorpion-like creature with Lazarus’s face at the end of a long neck.  
  
“What is that?” Tish demanded.   
  
The monster reared up on its hind legs and looked down at them, arms lifted in a threatening manner.   
  
“RUN!” the Doctor shouted.   
  
They ran.  
  
The Doctor sealed the lock on the door with the sonic while the girls fled down the stairs. No sooner had he succeeded did the monster start banging against the door, roaring and snaring. Rose stopped at the bottom of the stairs and waited for the Doctor to come down. He grabbed her hand as they passed and nearly pulled her arm out of its socket in his hurry to get them both away.  
  
“Are you okay?” Martha asked Tish.  
  
“I was gonna snog him.”   
  
If Rose didn’t happen to be in love with an alien that was well over nine hundred she would’ve had something to say about that. But as it was she couldn’t think of any way to belittle the woman for her stupidity without possibly scaring off the Doctor as well.   
  
Above them, the thing that used to be Lazarus continued to bang on the door. He finally did it one time too many and tripped the high-class security system and an alarm began to blare. A computerized voice repeated  _“Security breach”_  over the PA. The lights around them went off, immediately replaced by dimmer ones as the building went into lockdown, switching to the backup generators to power the lights.   
  
“What’s happening?” Martha whispered.  
  
“An intrusion,” Tish responded almost mechanically. She closed her eyes and tried to focus. “It triggers a security lockdown, kills most of the power, stops the lifts, seals the exits.”   
  
Another roar and bang above them and the four of them looked back the way they came.  
  
“He must be breaking through that door.” the Doctor realized. Another loud bang against the door and the Doctor turned around, his eyes alight. “The stairs! Come on!”   
  
They hurtled themselves down the stairs, hanging onto the railing to avoid falling in their haste. Rose was silently thanking the TARDIS for her nice selection of flat shoes while Martha inwardly cursed herself for not having followed Rose’s lead and gone without the heels. She was also silently wondering why she was even considering spending an indefinite amount of time living with these two if they couldn’t even go to a party without having to run for their lives. Then again, they’d all known going in that something would be amiss. She should’ve expected something like this to happen.   
  
From above came the sound of the door clattering against the wall as it was forced open, followed by a monstrous roar. They all froze for a moment, looking up in horror.   
  
“He’s inside!” Martha shouted.   
  
“Come on!” the Doctor called, a flight below her. “We haven’t got much time.”   
  
“Oh my God, we’re gonna die!” Tish wailed.  
  
“No we’re not! Keep running!!”  
  
When they sprinted into the reception hall they found all of the guests just standing about in confusion like sheep without a shepherd. The Doctor looked around, trying to count how many people were here, calculating how much damage Lazarus would cause when he arrived, and trying to work out some way to stop him. First things first, though, he had to get the humans out before anyone got killed. The lifts were out and those stairs only led up.   
  
“Tish, is there another way out of here?” he asked.   
  
“There’s an exit in the corner.” She pointed in the general direction of it. “But it’ll be locked up now.”  
  
He pulled out the sonic screwdriver from his pocket and tossed it to Rose. “Rose, setting 54. Hurry!” She caught it with a nod and hurried towards the door with Martha and Tish. That was his companions safe and out of the way, now for the rest of them. He leaped onto the stairs around the machine.   
  
“Listen to me!” he shouted to get their attention. “You people are in serious danger! You need to get out of here, right now!”  
  
A woman near the front of the group sneered. “Don’t be ridiculous. The biggest danger here is choking on an olive.”  
  
Why does no one ever listen?!  
  
Jus then from the direction of the stairs came a loud shattering noise and the sound of heavy footsteps. The Lazarus-monster appeared on the loft above them and reared up. He let out a guttural roar and people stared in horror. The Doctor quietly cursed in his native language and Lazarus jumped down onto the floor below, crushing a table beneath him. People began to scream and scatter in panic. Those who’d overheard Tish flocked towards the door and most of the others followed suit.   
  
Most of them.  
  
The woman in the gold dress remained where she was out of disbelief or perhaps she was just paralyzed with terror. In any case she was still frozen when the Lazarus-monster loomed over her, his jaws splitting and gaping wide. But he didn’t eat her. He swung his tail forward. The end of it uncurled into what looked like some sort of straw and the Doctor realized what he was about to do.  
  
“NO! Get away from her!” he shouted.   
  
The woman screamed her last and the Lazarus-monster pierced the top of her head with it’s straw. There was a single, almighty slurp and she was reduced before his eyes into a withered husk that looked like it’d been dead for decades and not nanoseconds.   
  
Then the Lazarus-monster turned towards the closest pair of humans, which just so happened to be Martha’s mother and brother. It advanced on them, growling, and the Doctor was filled with rage. He could barely tolerate when people tried to hurt his companions, but when they went after his companions’ families, that just crossed the line. His companions accepted the risk when they chose to come with him, their families didn’t. In the past their families usually never even really knew. He’d become familiar with Rose’s family and look at what had happened to them–trapped on one side of the Void with her on the other.   
  
Martha would not lose her family as well. He simply wouldn’t allow it.  
  
“Lazarus!” he shouted and the monster rounded on him. “Leave them alone!”   
  
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Martha and Rose kneeling beside Francine and Leo and the Doctor prayed that Rose would not try to follow him.  
  
“What’s the point?” he demanded. “You can’t control it. The mutation’s too strong. Killing those people won’t help you.”   
  
The Lazarus monster growled at him.   
  
“You’re a fool,” he said quietly and the monster’s face twisted angrily. “A vain old man who thought he could defy nature. Only nature got her own back, didn’t she? You’re a joke, Lazarus!” the Doctor shouted. “A footnote in the history of failure.”   
  
That did it. The Lazarus-monster reared up to attack him and the Doctor ran.   
  
“Doctor!” Rose shrieked and started to follow him, but Martha caught her before she got too far. “Let go of me!”   
  
“Rose, you’re only gonna get yourself killed.” Martha told her, glancing momentarily at the terrified guests trying to escape. “We have to get these people out!”   
  
Rose continued to struggle for a moment more, threw one last desperate look at the way the Doctor and the monster had gone, then allowed Martha to pull her towards her family.  
  
“What’s the Doctor doing?” Tish asked.   
  
“He’s trying to buy us some time. Let’s not waste it.” Martha said. She put her hands on either side of her brother’s face and lifted his head. “Leo, look at me. Focus on me. Let’s see your eyes. …He’s got a concussion. Mum, you’ll need to help him downstairs.” She moved over to the table behind them and grabbed a few ice cubes from the pale and wrapped them in a cloth napkin. “This will keep the swelling down.”  
  
Francine took the napkin, placing it gently against her son’s temple, and started to help him down the stairs. “Go, I’ll be right behind you.” Martha said then grabbed her sister by the arms. “Tish, move. We need to get out of here.”  
  
Tish went but Rose didn’t even move except to back at the reception hall. He wasn’t entirely hopeless without her, she knew, but he would probably need his sonic, and what if something happened to him because she wasn’t there to help?  
  
“Rose!” Martha shouted and she jumped, startled, looking down at the hand gripping her arm. “Move!”  
  
“If he dies I’ll never forgive myself for not goin’ after him.”  
  
“If you die he’ll never forgive  _me_  for letting you go after him!” Digging her nails into Rose’s skin, she pulled the stubborn blonde down the stairs with her.  
  
On the main floor the crowd of partygoers were crowding around the doors, banging and pressing futilely. Martha’s family stood in the back of the group, Leo leaning heavily on his mother.   
  
“We can’t get out!” Tish cried. “We’re trapped.”  
  
“No we’re not,” Rose said, flipping the sonic screwdriver in her hand.   
  
“Those doors don’t have locks like the one upstairs.”   
  
“There must be an override switch.” Martha said. “Where’s the security desk? Tish!”  
  
“There!”  
  
Rose ran towards it and Martha followed. Rose pushed herself onto the desk and slid across and bolted for the panel against the wall. She pointed the screwdriver at the controls and turned it on. A moment later the lights came on and the terrified people were able to push the doors open. They spilled through the doorway and ran screaming down the steps.  
  
“You did it!” Martha laughed and Rose smiled grimly back at her. She pushed herself back across the desk and followed Martha towards the doors where people were frantically filing out.   
  
Francine smiled in relief when she saw her daughter had returned unharmed. And she supposed it was good that the other woman was fine, too. She had gotten them out, after all. “Come on, let’s get out of here,” she said.  
  
Rose stopped, pressed her lips together in deliberation for a moment, and then shook her head. “No.”   
  
“What?” Martha spun around. “What do you mean no?”  
  
“I’m going back. I have to Martha.”   
  
“You can’t! You saw what that thing did.” Francine protested. “It’ll kill you!”  
  
“She’s right. Please,” Martha pleaded.  
  
“I have to. This is what everyone else before me has always done.” Rose said quietly so Martha’s family wouldn’t overhear. “He has to survive no matter what, even if it means we don’t. So that means you run headfirst into the thick of things and you risk your life to keep him alive, ‘cos your life means nothin’ next to his.”  
  
Martha stared at her somberly.  
  
“And if you can’t understand that then you should probably just stay here with your family.” Rose gripped the sonic tightly in her hand and backed away from her.   
  
Martha licked her lips and bit the bottom one. Rose waited. Finally, she nodded. “Right. Let’s go.”  
  
Tish spoke up from behind her. “He was biding us time. Time for you to get out too.”  
  
“Doesn’t matter,” Martha said without turning. “You get out. We’re going back.”  
  
“What did you say to her?” Francine glared at the young blonde who was trying to lead her daughter into danger.  
  
Rose’s eyes glinted and she met her gaze evenly. “I told her the truth.”  
  
And Francine Jones could do nothing but watch helplessly as the girl led her daughter back up the stairs until Tish pulled her out the door.


	17. Southwark Cathedral

Half an hour later, the Doctor, Martha Jones, and Rose Tyler emerged from Lazarus Laboratories after the paramedics. They were all tired, sore, hungry, and a little depressed, but otherwise no worse for the wear. Rose’s hair had come loose during the running and subsequent squishing inside the machine and there was really no hope of fixing it so she just pulled the hair tie and bobby pins out and let the rest fall free. She combed her fingers through it and the Doctor undid his tie and top button while they watched the stretcher carrying Lazarus’s body being loaded into the ambulance. A few photographers were snapping away.  
  
“Are we going now?” she asked. They never stuck around for the cleanup.  
  
“Yeah,” the Doctor murmured in reply.   
  
At that moment, Tish noticed her sister standing on the staircase and rushed towards her. “Oh, she’s alright!” She pulled Martha into a fierce hug, which was gladly recuperated.  
  
Francine Jones stalked towards them with a furious look on her face. The Doctor saw her coming but somehow seemed to miss her expression.  
  
“Oh, Mrs. Jones, we still haven’t finished our chat.” he said with a grin that was promptly smacked right off his face.   
  
Rose stepped towards the woman, ready to rip her a new one. “Hey, what do you think you’re–”  
  
Francine shoved her back forcefully. “You keep away from my daughter!” she snarled at them.   
  
“Mum, what are you doing?!” Martha demanded. Francine turned to her daughter.  
  
“Always the mothers.” the Doctor said to himself, rubbing the sore spot. “Every time.”  
  
“He is  _dangerous_  and so is she! I’ve been told things.”  
  
“What are you talking about?” Martha asked.  
  
Francine grabbed her daughter’s arms. “Look around you. Nothing but death and destruction.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Rose interrupted angrily. “But you seemed to have forgotten that he saved your sorry arse in there!”  
  
“And not just you, he saved all of us!” Martha shouted, breaking her mother’s grip.  
  
Rose looked up at the Doctor and touched his had gently. He glanced down and their eyes met and she saw the pain Francine’s words had caused. Everywhere he went it seemed that someone got hurt and he blamed himself, even if he wasn’t responsible. And there would always be someone who felt the need to remind him of that. He curled his fingers around hers, squeezing, and she wanted to kiss him right then in there.  
  
Except at that moment there was a very loud crash from the direction of the ambulance that Lazarus had been loaded. Loud crashes were never good especially not when they were coming from the direction a supposedly defeated enemy had gone. The Doctor looked at Rose, then at Martha, and the three of them headed for the ambulance.  
  
Francine reached out and caught her daughter by the arm and told her to leave them. The look her face was almost enough to break her resolve. Almost. But Rose’s words were stronger. She wanted to travel with them. She wanted the stars and the universe and she wanted to help people. If risking her neck was the price then she would gladly pay it. So Martha shook her head at her mother and ran after them.   
  
When they arrived at the ambulance they found the remains of the two paramedics as shriveled and dry as Lady Thaw and that other woman.   
  
“Lazarus, back from the dead.” the Doctor said grimly, pulling out the sonic. “Should’ve known, really.”  
  
“Where’s he gone?” Martha asked as the Doctor began to scan. He turned slowly in a circle until he was pointing at one of the buildings.   
  
“That way. The church.”  
  
“Cathedral,” Tish corrected and the girls turned in surprise. “It’s Southwark Cathedral. He told me.”  
  
The Doctor nodded and led their procession into the church, sonic screwdriver held aloft and beeping away. The moved slowly through the old building, eyes peeled for any sign of movement. Tish saw her own reflection in her peripheral vision and nearly jumped out of her skin Her gasp caused the rest of them to whirl around expecting to see the giant scorpion looming. The Doctor gave her an exasperated look and motioned for her to be quiet and they kept going. The sonic screwdriver led them into the sanctuary.   
  
The Doctor did a sweep off the room as the women slipped through the door.  
  
“Is he here?” Rose whispered.  
  
“Where would you go if you were looking for sanctuary?” the Doctor asked.   
  
They walked down the main isle. The Doctor kept his eyes to the front and his companions nervously scanned the shadows and alcoves for any sign. The trouble was that it was so dark and the room was simply huge, not counting the upper floor. There were a dozen places he could be and several dozen more if he was human formed. They found him in the very front of the church behind the ornately covered altar, completely naked except for a red blanket over him, choking and panting as he tried to stave off the transformation. The Doctor pocketed the screwdriver and Lazarus looked up at them.  
  
“I came here before,” he said quietly. The Doctor slowly started to circle him. “A lifetime ago. I thought I was going to die then. In fact, I was sure of it. I sat there, just a child…the sound of planes and bombs outside.”  
  
“The Blitz,” the Doctor stated.  
  
Lazarus’s eyes flicked up to him. “You’ve read about it.”  
  
“I was there.”  
  
Lazarus’s face registered surprise before he scoffed. “You’re too young.”  
  
“So are you.”  
  
Lazarus laughed then his face twisted and they heard some of his bones crunch and crack. He cried out in pain, gasping and panting, and leaned forward like he was going to be sick. They watched him, disgusted, and just a bit pitying.  
  
“In the morning the fires had died,” Lazarus went on after a moment. “And I was still alive. I swore I’d never face death like that again.”  
  
The Doctor used his momentary distraction to circle him some more, his eyes flicking around the church for something he could use. When his head lifted up towards the bell tower, Martha and Rose followed his gaze. There was nothing up there, not even any bells.  
  
“So  _defenseless_ ,” he spat the word. “I would arm myself, fight back, defeat it.”  
  
“That’s what you were trying to do today.”  
  
“That’s what I  _did_  today.”   
  
“What about the other people who died?” the Doctor argued as he continued to walk around him.   
  
“They were nothing,” Lazarus said simply. “I changed the course of history.”  
  
“Any of them might have done, too. You think history’s only made with equations?” he stopped in front of Lazarus. “Facing death is part of being human. You can’t change that.”   
  
“No, Doctor. Avoiding death–that’s being human. It’s our strongest impulse, to cling to life with every fiber of being. I’m doing what everyone before me has tried to do…. I’ve simply been more…successful– _ah_!” He cried out in pain, his back arching.  
  
“Look at yourself. You’re mutating. You’ve no control over it. You call that a success?”  
  
“I call it progress!” His bones continued to crack, his body preparing to morph again. A thin sheet of sweat covered his skin and some of his hair stuck to the sides of his head. After a painful sounding crack, Lazarus spoke again. “I’m more now than I was. More than just an ordinary human.”  
  
The Doctor had to smile at that. Of all the foolish things the professor had said and done that night that was the most misguided of them all. “There’s no such thing as an ordinary human.”  
  
Lazarus went into another round of cracking and popping and Martha crept up to the Doctor’s shoulder. “He’s gonna change again any minute.”  
  
“I know,” the Doctor whispered. “If I could get him up into the bell tower somehow, I’ve got an idea that might work.”  
  
“Up there?”   
  
“Uh-huh.” He nodded and moved away from the women, keeping Lazarus’s attention focused on him.  
  
Martha looked up at the tower for a moment longer then turned to Rose, a question in her eyes. Rose nodded grimly.  
  
“ _I’ve got an idea,_ ” she mouthed.  
  
Rose lifted her eyebrows. “ _Bait?_ ”  
  
“ _Yeah. Me, you…_ ” she continued to slowly mouth her idea while the Doctor and Lazarus spoke.  
  
“You’re so sentimental, Doctor.” Lazarus said quietly, a growl entering his voice. “Maybe you  _are_  older than you look.”  
  
“I’m old enough to know that a longer life isn’t always a better one.” the Doctor told him gravely. “In the end, you just get tired– tired of the struggle, tired of watching everything turn to dust.” The Doctor knelt down next to Lazarus then. “If you live long enough, Lazarus, the only certainty left is that you’ll end up alone.”  
  
“That’s a price worth paying.”  
  
“Is it?”   
  
Rose was trying to catch his eye, but the Doctor wouldn’t even look at her. Lazarus’s body contorted in pain again. She and Martha slowly inched towards him. They had a plan and hopefully it might work.  _For once_ , she added.  
  
“I will feed soon,” Lazarus told him.   
  
“I’m not gonna let that happen.”  
  
“You’ve not been able to stop me so far.”  
  
“Leave him, Lazarus!” Martha interrupted and he turned, his face twisted in a snarl. “He’s old and bitter.” She grinned slyly, cocking her hip towards Rose who had her hands on her own hips. “We thought you had a taste for fresher meat.”  
  
“Martha, Rose, no!” the Doctor barked but it was too late. Lazarus’s grin turned predatory and with a guttural snarl, he launched himself at them.   
  
They’d been expecting this and they were already running by the time he was in the air. They hadn’t expected Tish to follow to ‘keep them out of trouble.’ Rose shouted over her shoulder about the tower and then started up the staircase. Their feet clacked against the stone steps as they raced up the circular passage. Rose had to hitch her skirt up so she wouldn’t trip. Below them they heard Lazarus groan and snarl and Tish stopped.  
  
“Don’t just stand here!” Rose all but shrieked. “He’s changed again!”  
  
“We have to keep moving. We have to lead him up.” Martha told her sister urgently.   
  
Lazarus’s snarls and roars echoed off the stone around them. The staircase led into a narrow hallway that was some sort of service passage. A pipeline ran along the wall above the arched openings and the side they’d emerged from was lined with curved stone beams. Rose led them down the hall in the direction of the bell tower. There had to be someway for people to access the tower for maintenance. Hopefully they’d find another service staircase.   
  
From below she heard the Doctor call her name frantically. She stopped at the closest arch and poked her head through. “Here!”  
  
“Take him to the top–the very top of the bell tower! Do you hear me?”  
  
“Got it! Then what?”  
  
“Rose!” Martha gasped, tapping her shoulder urgently.   
  
Rose withdrew her head, looked at Martha, then at the approaching mutant monster. She let out a curse and they ran like mad. Around the corner they found another staircase and they sprinted up it. Martha screeched that when this was over that she’d never wear heels again. If they weren’t busy running for their lives from a mutant monster that she was sure humans looked like in at least one alternate universe, Rose might have laughed.   
  
The top of the bell tower turned out to be a small octagon surrounding a circular hole in the floor and the only thing that kept hem from falling into said hole when they rushed through the door was a flimsy wooden rail. They quickly moved around to the far side, looking for an exit that wasn’t there.  
  
“There’s no where else to go!” Tish whimpered.   
  
“This is where he said to bring him!” Martha exclaimed.   
  
“Alright then so we’re not trapped. We’re bait. Lovely bloke you’ve got, Rose.”   
  
“We knew we were gonna be the bait. Now trust him, he knows what he’s doing.” Rose said. “We’ve gotten out of worse scrapes than this.”  
  
“Worse than a giant  _thing_  that wants to kill us?!” she screeched.   
  
“Ladies,” the Lazarus-monster hissed as he pushed himself through the door. He growled at them, rearing onto his hind legs, and sank two of his pincers into the rail.   
  
Rose gritted her teeth and clenched her fists, stepping in front of Martha even as she was moving to shield her sister. “He’ll have to get through me, first.” Rose told them. “If you can, go through the door and get back downstairs. I’ll keep him busy.”  
  
“You can’t!” Tish protested.  
  
“I  _can_ ,” Rose told her and turned back to Lazarus just in time to see his tail swinging towards them.   
  
They ducked and someone screamed. It might’ve been all three of them. He drew back and swung his tail at them again. This time they had to dive to the sides to avoid getting hit. Pipe organ music suddenly blasted through the air, echoing the space around them. Had to be the Doctor, but what did he expect to do with music? Lazarus took another swing and this time he knocked the railing near them clean off. It fell through the hole, leaving them exposed. Rose wisely crawled away from the opening before trying to rise, but Martha didn’t.  
  
Next thing she knew, Martha was screaming and Tish was shouting her name and when she looked, Martha was dangling over the side. Lazarus loomed over her, swiping and stabbing at her with his various limbs while she screamed and struggled to hang on.  
  
“Lazarus!” Rose shouted over the music. “Leave her alone! RICHARD LAZARUS!”   
  
He swung his head towards her and, mustering up the courage she’d felt when she’d spoken against the Daleks at Canary Wharf, she shouted at him. “You’re nothing, Lazarus! I once looked into Time itself–do you hear me?! Time  _itself_! I saw everything! All that ever was, all that ever could be, from beginning to end! History will forget you!”  
  
Lazarus roared and swung at her. She ducked to avoid him then straightened up and hurled the words at him. “This universe will never forget me! But in a hundred years–a thousand–no one will even remember your name!”  
  
And then she couldn’t speak anymore because the music became absolutely deafening. It roared through the air, louder than Lazarus’s cries, and she dropped to her knees, pressing her hands firmly over her ears and her eyes squeezed. She might have screamed. If she did she couldn’t hear it.  
  
The music stopped abruptly and she opened her eyes, tentatively lowering her hands from her ears, and looked around. Lazarus was gone. Had he fallen?  
  
Martha screamed and Tish lunged forward to grab her sister by the arm. “I’ve got you! Hold on!”  
  
Rose scrambled around to them and latched onto Martha’s other arm. Together she and Tish pulled her up and over the ledge and then they slumped against the wall, panting and holding each other in relief. The Doctor shouted their names. She had to gulp down a few mouthfuls of air before she could shout, “We’re okay! We’re okay, Doctor.”  
  
Martha looked between Rose and Tish. “Thanks.”  
  
Tish laughed in relief. “It’s your Doctor you should be thanking.”  
  
“Told you,” Rose said breathlessly.   
  
“He cut it a bit fine though, didn’t he?”   
  
“As usual but he never fails.” Rose reached up to wipe a tear from her eye.   
  
Tish stared at the woman finding it hard to believe she was the same bright-eyed girl she’d met down at the party a few hours ago. She was no young girl who may or may not have been a science geek. She was someone who looked death in the eye on a regular basis, who willingly put her life and theirs in the hands of a skinny man who was undeniably older than he looked, and never doubted him for a second. She’d been able to convince Martha–the peacekeeper in the family–to run back into the fray. And she’d stood against Lazarus with amber in her eyes and spoke of looking into time itself. “Who  _are_  you? Both of you?”   
  
Rose seemed to consider her for a moment then her lips curled up into a smile. “We’re the Stuff of Legends.” Then she covered her face with her hands, resting her head against the wall, and laughed with relief.  
  
A few minutes later Rose was leading their procession back downstairs. She practically sprinted down while Martha and Tish followed more slowly. Martha had absolutely no plans of running any more today, thank you very much. Maybe not even for a week. Though with them there was probably no chance of that happening. When they got back to the main floor they found Rose and the Doctor clinging to each other.   
  
There was a smile on the Doctor’s face that Martha hadn’t seen before, one that expressed everything he never said, and he closed his eyes contently.  
  
“W-we should get outside,” Tish stuttered. “We need to let someone know about him and the paramedics.”  
  
The couple loosened their hold on each other and he looked over Rose’s head at her with a small smile. “That’ll be your job, then.”  
  
“What, me? Why?”  
  
“You’re head of the PR department, of course.”   
  
“Well–well, what should I tell them?”  
  
The Doctor shrugged. “I dunno. You decide.”  
  
“But…but I don’t even know what happened!”  
  
“And you think I do?” he asked. Tish wasn’t the only one that glared at him. “Oh, alright, fine. Tell them that the machine caused the mutations and everything related to the project should be destroyed immediately. Humanity isn’t ready for anti-aging technology. You lot will have to stick to vitamins for now. In the mean time, we,” he gestured to the three of them, “have to get going.”  
  
“You’re not gonna come and at least see Mum?” Tish asked her sister.  
  
“And listen to her go off about them some more?” Martha shook her head. “No ta. Just tell her I went home.”  
  
Tish frowned shrewdly. “And where are you really going?”   
  
Martha pressed her lips together and they curled up into a smile. “Home.”   
  
It was only after they’d left did Tish realize the Doctor had said ‘you lot’ when he spoke about humans. And after a moment of terror she realized that Martha had heard him as well and hadn’t reacted. Neither had Rose. So her sister may or may not be running around with a pair of aliens–that was reassuring. Though, they were only alive thanks to those two so they couldn’t be all bad. Still, probably be best if she didn’t mention that to her Mum.   
  
At his companions’ refusal to walk back to the flat, the Doctor hailed a cab. They spent the ride crammed together in the back seat, Rose using the opportunity to snuggle contently under the Doctor’s arm. He himself spent the ride chatting with the cabbie, who’d heard that something had gone down at Lazarus Laboratories and wanted to know if they’d seen anything. When they arrived at the building, Martha ran up to her flat to get some money to pay the driver while Rose and the Doctor waited below. Once he was paid and had driven off, they followed her back upstairs.   
  
The Doctor patted the side of his ship fondly then turned to Martha. “Well then. That’s sorted. So, have you made up your mind, then?”  
  
“Yes, I have.” Martha said. “I’m coming with you. Right now.”  
  
“What about med school and all that?” the Doctor asked while Rose’s mouth stretched into a smile.  
  
“I don’t have to finish now, do I? You can just drop me back off a few days from now if I ever want a break.”   
  
“Well, in that case, welcome aboard the TARDIS, Miss Jones.” The Doctor grinned and unlocked the door, holding it open for them. Martha didn’t look back once. She didn’t even bother to grab any of her things. The wardrobe had enough for her and if not, well, she was sure Rose wouldn’t say no to a shopping trip.  
  
The Doctor started the dematerialization sequence and when he informed them that they’d entered the Vortex, Martha breathed a sigh of…relief? No not relief, because then that would mean she was happy to be leaving her family behind. Well, okay, maybe she was. After being the mediator between them all for so long she was eager to have some time away from them and their never-ending drama. She knew that this was only temporary and it would all be there waiting for her when she got back, along with med school, but for now, she was going to follow the Doctor’s example and run away.   
  
She took the idea that she’d abandoned them and shoved it to the back of her mind, locking it firmly behind a steel door. She had  _not_  abandoned them. She’d be back. And they didn’t need her specifically on this night. Lazarus was dead and they were safe.   
  
They’d be fine. They didn’t need her. 

 

 


	18. In Which They Run

Two months went by for the travellers in the TARDIS.   
  
Some days they visited other planets. Usually recreational places only: markets and bazaars, theme parks and museums, gardens, parties, and once to a holo-film theater. Sometimes things didn’t go as planned and they were either kicked out, or arrested and  _then_  kicked out. Other times they were arrested and then told to leave and instead of being forcefully banned, they were simply requested to not return.   
  
Like on the planet Orobis, which was quite a lovely place, with a pink sky and two red suns, and an indigenous population that was very hospitable. The three of them had been walking down the street looking at the various shops, the Doctor and Rose holding hands as usual. It was going fine until he offered his hand to Martha as well. Thirty seconds later he was being arrested for polygamy.   
  
Orobis was, as a whole, very religious and apparently their god had decreed a man could only have one wife. So the Doctor, being the man, was decreed to be the guilty party and was chucked in jail while Martha and Rose were whisked away to undergo a ceremony that would break the marital bonds and free them from their life of sin. They hadn’t been able to get a word in edgewise up until the point when they were informed that their clothes would be confiscated and burned for some stupid symbolic reason. Then they managed to get the priests and priestesses to shut up long enough to explain the relationship between the three of them–or lack thereof. An hour later the Doctor was free from prison and they were escorted back to the TARDIS with requests to not return in the near future.  
  
On the flip side of this was Lua, a small planet with four hours of day and twenty-eight of night. The indigenous people were, for lack of a better word, werewolves. Unlike the Lupine Wavelength Haemovariform, the creatures here had only one form, that of a humanoid lupine. They were intelligent and fiercely protective of all that was theirs, especially in the days before their civilizations began to rise. The Doctor, Rose, and Martha found this out the hard way.  
  
They’d landed smack in the middle of the territory of a pack that had just emerged from a feud with a rival pack. The sudden, alien appearance of the TARDIS had spooked a scout and it had gone to alert the pack. Unaware of this, the three travelers had set out into the woods with torches for light and within minutes they were running from a horde of snarling figures in the dark. They got separated; Martha was taken first, then Rose, and finally the Doctor. They were hauled back to the village and Martha and the Doctor were thrown into their equivalent of prison. Rose, however, was not there. Martha wondered aloud if Rose had fought back and they’d killed her. Then she had to keep the suddenly irate Time Lord from setting fire to the building, salting the earth, and cursing the firstborns.   
  
Two hours later the doors to the jail were opened and in stepped Rose, adorned with jewelry and a wrapped in a fur cloak, completely unharmed. The Doctor had snatched her up into a bone-crushing hug that would have been perceived as a threat by her escorts had she not immediately wrapped her arms around him in response.   
  
“What happened?” he demanded. “I thought you’d…”   
  
She put her hands on his cheeks to sooth him. “It’s actually kind of a funny story. You remember the werewolf in Scotland? Down in the cellar, before he transformed, he said I had ‘something of the wolf’ about me. Well, whatever it is, this lot can sense it too. They believe it means their goddess has blessed me. I’m practically royalty. The Alpha has asked me if I wished to marry his son, and everythin’. Told ‘em I had to respectfully decline because I’m already married. We’ve been invited to dinner with the Alpha’s family. I think he wants to apologize.”  
  
The Alpha did apologize but then turned right around and scolded them for encroaching on their turf and scaring the poor sentry half to death so soon after a feud. Then he said that since they were aliens that they couldn’t be expected to know about such tings. There were requests for them to stay among their pack for a time because, surely, the presence of a goddess-blessed would be beneficial to their lands. Rose could think of no way to decline without seeming heartless but Martha, thinking quickly, said that they had their own families back on their planet that would miss them terribly if they were gone too long. Then she, with a sly look in her direction, suggested that Rose could simply pray to the goddess on their behalf.   
  
Another time the Doctor took them to the planet Isara to visit Lilah, the young elflike girl Rose had befriended the last time they were there. She was five years older than when Rose last saw her (the Doctor insisted he’d landed in that year on purpose) and was an adolescent at this point and was very excited to see Rose.   
  
Rose brought the hot pink casts out so Lilah could see the color again and told her about the new names and why she’d had to wear it the last time. When she thought he wouldn’t overhear, Lilah quietly asked if the Doctor and Rose were married yet. (Of course she hadn’t known that the Doctor had exceptional hearing and that he’d still be able to hear her even from all the way over there. That got him thinking about Shareen Costello’s words again.)   
  
As it turned out, there was a reason the TARDIS had taken them to that date. The people of Isara all had elemental affinities that they called ‘magick,’ which they came into during puberty. Liliah had already gotten hers–earth–and the swirling patterns across her hands had turned from the white of youth to the green and brown of one gifted with earth magick.  
  
A boy had decided to practice his fire magick without his mentor around, knowing full well that most of those with water magick had gone down into the valley to practice and swim. If it hadn’t been for the Doctor’s quick thinking and sonic screwdriver, the entire village would’ve probably been burned to the ground. They stuck around for the cleanup this time. The Doctor drew up plans for a fire hydrant system in case something like this happened again, suggesting they spread the idea to the neighboring communities. Martha used her medical skills to help their healers treat the wounded and was able to give them a few tips while they in turn gave her some knowledge as well. Rose helped dig through the rubble for anything that could be scavenged and helped console those who had all or part of their homes.   
  
They were sent off with many thanks, gifts, and promises that, even if they never returned, they would never be forgotten.   
  
Martha was feeling particularly pleased after that planet. “That was great. I mean I know it’s horrible that they got hurt, but getting to help like that. They were so…happy. Every single one of them that I helped thanked me. One older woman, she blessed me with her magick.”  
  
“She blessed you?” the Doctor asked interestedly. “What kind of magick could she do?”  
  
“I dunno,” Martha said.   
  
“The patterns on her hands, what color were they?”  
  
Martha had to think about it for a second. “Silver.”  
  
The Doctor’s eyes shot towards his hairline. “Ooooh. Now that is interesting. What did she say?”  
  
“She…she told me that I’d have a long, good life and that I’d meet my love at the darkest time.”  
  
The Doctor nodded slowly but she couldn’t tell from his expression what he thought about it. She glanced at Rose who shrugged, just as confused as she was. “That’s good news, then,” the Doctor said at last. “Remember how I told you a few humans are low-level psychics? Well, a handful of Isarans don’t develop affinities for any of the natural elements. She must’ve been one of them if she had silver hands. She wasn’t blessing you, she was telling you your future.”  
  
“She what?”  
  
“Or, well, she was telling you your most likely future based on the current way our timelines are progressing. You have a lot of potential futures. I can see them around you,” he gestured at her vaguely. “I make it a point not to look at my companions’ possible futures if I can help it–I don’t really want to know, to be quite honest–but I’d bet you anything, if I looked at your most probable future, it’d match up.”  
  
Martha curled her mouth and nodded. “Good to know, then. But…what’d she mean by ‘darkest time?’”  
  
“Ooh, beats me.”  
  
She smiled and started to walk away, but then she stopped abruptly, spinning around. “I nearly forgot! She said one other thing before she left. She looked right at you and said, “He is not alone.”   
  
The Doctor raised his eyebrows again. “Those exact words? Nothing more?”  
  
“Nope. …It’s like what the Face of Boe said.”  
  
“It’s exactly what the Face of Boe said,” he muttered to himself. “But it  _can’t_  be. I would  _know_ …” Running his hand through his hair in agitation, he disappeared into the bowels of the TARDIS. Neither companion followed him.  
  
When they weren’t going to other planets or spending their days within the TARDIS, they were hopping through Earth’s history.   
  
They went to see the 2008 Olympics and the Doctor had the TARDIS sweep for any ionic energy (just in case), which led to Rose explaining the 2012 Olympics and the Isolus. They stayed for the whole event. Rose dug out her old Union Jack t-shirt and the Doctor refused to don anything with a flag on it, opting instead to wear his blue suit and red chucks. Great Britain ended up being one of the top five countries. Rose commented that, once again, Papua New Guinea went home medal-less.   
  
“What? I never said they would actually  _win_  anything,” was his defense.   
  
They went to see the first moon landing–once from Earth and once from the moon itself. Though the latter ended rather abruptly when one of the astronauts turned and noticed them peering out from behind a large rock wearing spacesuits and well beyond the TARDIS perception filter. They’d had to leg it down to Earth and inform NASA that, no, they weren’t Russians or residents of the moon, and that, yes, he was the Doctor and he was just entertaining his two companions with a bit of Earth history. If they had any issue with that they could contact a certain Brigadier at UNIT. Then, for the hell of it, they jumped ahead to the next landing and did it again.   
  
On a dare from Rose, they went to the year 447 and Martha threw two eggs at Atilla the Hun. She would’ve thrown three but she only managed to land two before he was up and charging. They went to the year 1129 and they got proper fruit juice, like the Doctor had promised back in the hospital. One time he told Martha to pick eight random numbers between 0 and 9, which he then used as date coordinates. They did that three times.  
  
Some days they didn’t leave the Vortex. These days were spent getting to know each other, talking, and wandering the TARDIS. They watched the Doctor tinker and do maintenance and helped when they could. They located the pool and he fixed the heater and when the three of them came back in their swimsuits they found a diving board and a waterslide ready and waiting. They sat in the library for hours and listened raptly as the Doctor read aloud the final Harry Potter book, because Rose insisted that the books were a thousand times better when the Doctor read them.  
  
Martha agreed.   
  
She and Rose liked to roam around the wardrobe and search for interesting clothes. One time the TARDIS rearranged things so all of the Doctor’s old outfits were laid out together on a shelf. It took the girls a few minutes to figure out what the odd array of outfits had in common, until Rose realized there were nine of them total, with his old black leather jacket and a burgundy jumper being at the end of the line, and the rest quickly fell into place. Every day for the next nine days, they dropped one piece of his outfits somewhere in the TARDIS that he would find. The first day they hung a frock coat over the back of the chair in the kitchen. Unfortunately they weren’t around to witness his discovery of it, though Martha glimpsed him heading into the wardrobe with the coat in hand.   
  
The next day he found Rose in the library, unaware that she’d been waiting for him. “Doctor,” she said without looking up from her book, “I think Cruella DeVille is passed out drunk over in the biographies section.”  
  
He blinked. “What?”  
  
She turned the page. “Either that or there’s a dead bear over there.”  
  
Completely baffled, the Doctor went to investigate, and returned with an oversized fur coat in his hands. She looked up from her book and arched her eyebrows. “Not Cruella, then?”  
  
The next day Martha was present to witness his surprise at discovering an opera cape hanging from the coat rack in the library. When the three of them went into the console room the following morning, they saw an absurdly long multi-colored scarf decorating several of the coral struts. Martha’s work, since Rose had been curled up against the Doctor’s chest all night. The fifth day he found a plate of celery in the kitchen, though when they questioned each other, both girls denied having put it out. By then he was getting suspicious and Rose caught him scouring the wardrobe, but when she checked the place where all his outfits had been recently, she found that all but one of them had been moved, proving that the TARDIS was, in fact, in on the joke.   
  
The sixth day they put a colorful coat that he must’ve stolen from the circus on the pilot’s chair. The seventh day they hung a black umbrella with a red question mark handle from the chandelier near the door to the garden. The eighth day Martha randomly dropped the long green velvet jacket in the hallway and hoped the TARDIS would switch hallways up so he’d find it. The ninth day, Rose walked around wearing his leather jacket until he finally noticed her, and stared.  
  
“What?” she asked innocently and left the room. She wore it for the rest of the day and at dinner, Martha showed up with a panama hat on her head.   
  
“Something the matter, Doctor?” she asked when he gawked at them.  
  
“B-but–but how did you…I thought it was the TARDIS!”  
  
Rose arched one eyebrow. “Did you really run around in an opera cape?”  
  
More than once Martha would come across the Doctor and Rose, take one look at them, and turned right around and leave. They weren’t ever up to anything; just cuddling on the couch in the library or sitting together in the kitchen, laughing and talking. They just looked so  _right_  together and she didn’t want to spoil it. Other times she stood there, watching them and waiting to be noticed. It was those times where she realized how much they loved each other, even if they never said. It was in everything they did: in their eyes whenever they met, in their hugs, in the way their fingers curled together, whenever they kissed (platonically and not-so-platonically, though the latter occurred far less often), and sometimes heard between sentences, hidden behind other words.  
  
Whenever she saw them together, she couldn’t deny that she felt a bit envious of the pair. Okay, more than a little bit. Though what were the chances any man would ever look at her the way the Doctor looked at Rose? He may have very well single-handedly ruined every man for her, because after seeing the two of them, how could she not compare everything any man would do or give her to what she’d seen the Doctor do for Rose, or what the Doctor had done for her?  
  
A bouquet of flowers: the Doctor took them to a planet with endless rolling hills with valleys of flowers and tall grass that tickled their skin.  
  
Chocolate: nothing on Earth could compare to the chocolate they’d had on one of the Dancing Moons in 11349.   
  
A date to the movies: they’d met Shakespeare and went to a holo-film theater. (The only exception would probably be if they went on a date to see Terminator 4, which the Doctor still refused to take them to.)   
  
Dinner at a fancy restaurant: they went to a masquerade on a planet where she was treated like royalty for having dark skin, hair, and eyes. (The Doctor did that solely for her, since Rose–with her light hair and skin–was about as low as a servant. Though neither of them seemed too bothered by the fact that no one asked Rose to dance and they were able to spend the entire evening in each other’s company. …Yeah, better add that to the list of things as well.)  
  
A holiday somewhere nice: she went on holidays almost every day with these two! Actually, her whole life them was one big holiday when she thought about it.  
  
A stable life, a house, and kids: the Doctor gave her all of time and space.  
  
It was enough to make her bang her head against the coral strut in her room in frustration. Several times.  
  
Some days Martha thought of her family repeatedly. She wondered how they were doing without her–how much time for them had passed or would pass until they landed back in her flat for a visit. And the Doctor promised they could visit whenever she wanted to. She didn’t. Not yet.   
  
She wanted to live this life for a little longer because going back would mean going back to finish medical school, because she would’ve only had a few days off if she hadn’t gone with them. Going back would also mean facing her mother and having to hear her go on about the Doctor and Rose and them being dangerous. (But she was dangerous too now, wasn’t she?) Going back would mean getting sucked back into her family’s drama. Going back would mean staying back, even if it were only for a while.   
  
And when she was done with med school she would return to the TARDIS to travel–but that meant she’d either have to come up with an excuse to be absent for extended periods of time (repeatedly if she ever planned to visit)…or tell her family the truth. Neither option seemed pleasant.  
  
Some days she didn’t think about her family at all. At first when she’d realize, she’d feel bad about it for a while afterwards. For all their faults, they were still her _family_. But gradually she became less bothered. Everyone on the TARDIS was running from something. Hell, even the TARDIS herself was probably running from something. Martha herself was no different.  
  
“I want to visit New York City,” Martha said one morning after breakfast when they were in the console room.  
  
“To see Cheen and Milo’s baby?” Rose asked.  
  
“No, I want to go to New York City. The original one in America. Always wanted to go.”   
  
“Blimey, why didn’t I ever think of that?” She smacked her forehead. “Can we go?”  
  
“Sure, why not.” The Doctor smiled at them and moved to set their coordinates. “We’ve been mucking around in the past for the past few weeks so how does 2130 sound? The future, but near enough to your present time that things won’t be too different…and they had an excellent run of  _The Lion King_  that year. Wouldn’t mind swinging by Broadway, would you?”  
  
“Of course not!” Martha laughed.   
  
“Well then, hang on!”   
  
No sooner had the words left his mouth than the TARDIS gave a shuddering lurch around them. After nine weeks and multiple instances where she’d banged her head on something, Martha had gotten the hang of it. With the railing out of reach, she braced herself for impact with the grating, bending her knees and throwing her hands out in front to catch herself. It worked and she was spared a concussion. She didn’t even bother to rise knowing damn well she’d probably just get knocked right back down. When the TARDIS landed, she looked up at the Doctor with a frown.  
  
“Well, here we are then!” he said cheerfully.   
  
“You’re a menace,” she growled. “I’m surprised no one’s come to impound the TARDIS and take your license.”  
  
“Martha Jones, do you honestly think anyone would be able to  _impound_  my ship?” he scoffed.   
  
“Yes,” Rose said seriously. “An’ then you’d talk their ears off and they’d give her back just to shut you up.”  
  
“Oi!” he protested, moving to help Martha up. Rose smiled sweetly at him and bounded over to the doors.  
  
The Doctor grabbed his coat from off a coral strut and followed his companions out the door. Almost immediately after stepping out he was greeted by a blast of cool, salty Atlantic air and Rose Tyler’s scowl.  
  
“2130, eh?”   
  
“Yeah, what do–” He looked over her head at the landscape of New York City and the words died in his throat. “Ah. So I must’ve gotten the flight a bit wrong. Could happen to anyone.”  
  
Rose decided to just let it go. At least they’d managed to land in New York City. She could see the Empire State Building in the distance, still under construction for the looks of it. That would make it the 20th century, then. She’d guessed it was before her time from the old-style ships sailing across the water, anyway.  
  
“Martha, Rose, have you met my friend?” the Doctor asked conversationally and pointed upwards. They turned their heads skyward and saw a famous green statue towering above them.   
  
Martha laughed. “Is that–? Oh my God! That’s the Statue of Liberty!”  
  
“Gateway to the New World,” the Doctor said. “‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’”  
  
“This is brilliant,” she murmured.   
  
“At least we’re actually in New York,” Rose said cheerfully. “Although, I do think we might stand out a bit.” She glanced down at her jeans, trainers, light blue shirt, and gray jacket. Martha was no better in her own jeans, trainers, black tank, and red leather jacket.  
  
“Nah, don’t worry. This is New York!” the Doctor crowed. “You could be one of the Catkind and fit in around here. You could be Catkind and not be the strangest thing seen around here, actually.”  
  
“Yeah, not when there’s a Time Lord prancing about,” Martha muttered to Rose.  
  
“I love this city,” he went on as they started towards the pier. “So good they named it twice. Mind you, it was New Amsterdam originally. Harder to say twice. Now wonder it didn’t catch on. New Amsterdam, New Amsterdam.”  
  
“So, obviously we’re not in 2130–what year is it?”  
  
“Well.” He nodded in the direction of the city. “There’s the Empire State, still a work in progress. Looks like they’ve got a couple more floors to go. Which makes the date somewhere around–”  
  
“1930?” Rose guessed. “That’s two hundred years off where were supposed to land. Same difference, right?”  
  
“She’s right,” Martha said from behind them. She was looking down at a newspaper someone had left on a bench. She walked over to them and held up the paper for them to see. “November 1st, 1930,” she read and allowed the Doctor to pull it from her fingers. “That’s nearly eighty years ago. It’s funny ‘cause you see all those old newsreels in black and white like it’s so far away, but here we are. It’s real. It’s now. I’m never going to get used to this, I swear. I don’t know how you have, Rose.”  
  
“Who says I have?”  
  
Martha laughed. “Right, come on you two. Where to first?”  
  
“Central Park,” the Doctor said grimly and showed them the headline.  
  
“‘Hooverville Mystery Deepens,’” Rose read aloud.   
  
“What’s Hooverville?” Martha asked.  
  
“C’mon,” the Doctor said, rolling up the newspaper and stuffing it into his pocket. “Let’s go see if we can’t catch a ferry across the water.”  
  
“Hang on!” Rose said, spinning back around, and dashed into the TARDIS. The Doctor and Martha glanced at each other. The Doctor shrugged. She re-emerged a minute or so later (actually it was two minutes and three-point-two-seven seconds, according to the Doctor. Not that he was counting the seconds he couldn’t see her. Not at all) with a pair of brown fuzzy-knit fingerless gloves on her hands and a pair for Martha. “Okay, now we can go.”  
  
Getting across the water was the easy part. A boat was leaving in five minutes to Manhattan and a quick flash of the psychic paper was enough to get them on board. After receiving several scandalous looks, Rose and Martha mutually decided to move away from the crowds and the Doctor followed. It was one of those times, as the three of them leaned against the starboard railing, that they were all silent. The Doctor was staring ahead at the city, completely engrossed in his thoughts and Martha was looking back at the Statue of Liberty.  
  
Rose was leaning over the side, watching the water. They were at the mouth of the Hudson, the water from the river fed out into the bay. She’d always heard that the river was as bad as the River Thames so she figured the bay wouldn’t look much better. But the water wasn’t so bad, not in this time anyway, and she could see little fish swimming around below the surface. And was that someone’s hat? She blinked, leaning further to get a better look, but she almost immediately felt a pair of hands on her waist, pulling her firmly back onto the right side of the railing.   
  
“Careful, I don’t want to have to fish you out of the river,” the Doctor said.  
  
She frowned indignantly. “I wasn’t gonna fall. I’m not a little kid, Doctor.”  
  
“No, but you’re very jeopardy-friendly, and you were halfway over before I pulled you back.”  
  
“I thought I saw a hat. I wanted to check,” she said and realized that even though she had two feet safely on the boat deck, the Doctor’s hands had yet to leave her waist.  
  
“Just be careful, please,” he said.   
  
Martha smiled, her lips pressed together, and slowly eased away from them. After nine weeks on board she’d also learned to make a quick and unnoticeable escape whenever one of these moments occurred. Not that it had made a difference yet because unless they were already secretly shagging, then absolutely nothing was going on either side of the doors in the TARDIS. Or in the console room, for that matter.   
  
Yet another thing that made her bang her head against the wall in frustration and she was beginning to wish she was closer to the TARDIS so the two of them could arrange for the Doctor and Rose to get locked in a cupboard for a few hours. The sexual tension was driving her up the walls.  
  
Still, she liked to give them space just in case.  
  
Of course, the Doctor noticed the location of his hands a few seconds later and dropped them quickly, clearing his throat, and turned towards the city. “So, ah, we’re heading to Central Park. It’s about a two-hour walk from Battery Park where we’re docking so we’ll be catching a cab.”  
  
“We need money for that,” Martha reminded him, leaning against the railing. “And this is the ‘30s. No money movers to be sonic-ed.”  
  
The Doctor frowned and dug around through his pockets. “Hang on, I’ve been in this era of America before. Might have enough somewhere…”  
  
“You’ve got an entire thrift store in those pockets, don’t you?”   
  
He paused his search and pulled a yo-yo and a cassette tape out of his left pocket, arching his eyebrow at her, and then dropped them back in and continued rummaging around. It took most of the rest of the ride across but he had located about twenty dollars worth of bills and change in his pocket by the time they’d docked. Some of it was a bit out-dated, but he said the cabbie wouldn’t be likely to notice.   
  
They caught a cab outside of the park–a rickety thing compared to a modern cab, with a red body, black roof, and a very long engine in the front–and the driver agreed to take them up to the park.   
  
“Look a bit too nice, an’ you can afford to fair, so you ain’t fallen on your ass yet? So you got family up there in the shanty?” the driver asked in a thick New York accent.   
  
“No,” the Doctor said. “We’re just sightseeing. We’re not from around here.”  
  
“Well no kiddin’!” the man crowed. “I knew the moment you got in the car! Twenty years I been drivin’ cabs! Twenty years! I got an eye for it! I can tell where people come from within the first few seconds! Accent usually helps, but you don’t look local, neither. Is that what girls are wearin’ in London these days?”  
  
“No,” Rose said. “We’re just rebels, that’s all.”  
  
The man guffawed. “Well, alright! I guess it don’t matter what people wear right now. Long as it’s warm. Most folk ain’t got the time or the money to be picky about anything. If you wanna dress like a man then, by all means ladies, g’head.”   
  
It took about half an hour to get up to Central Park. After the cabbie pulled up to the sidewalk and put the car in park, he turned in his seat. He seemed to be sizing them up and contemplating something. “You seem like nice folks. Best keep them close to your side, y’hear? I dunno if you heard yet, but people’s been goin’ missin’ from around here lately. Dunno who, what, or why, but it’s happenin’ and ain’t no one in power doin’ nothin’ about it.”  
  
The Doctor smiled and handed him the fare, plus a tip. “We will, and thank you. Good luck.”  
  
“You too.”  
  
The Doctor got out of the car and held the door open for his companions. They crossed the street and headed into the park. He asked a passing man on a bike if he knew where Hooverville was. They were pointed in the right direction and they set off.   
  
“So, what’s Hooverville?” Martha asked.  
  
“Do you know who the current president is?” the Doctor asked.  
  
“No.”  
  
“Herbert Hoover, 31st President of the USA, came to power a year ago.” he said in what Martha had come to think of as his ‘teacher voice.’ Because whenever he used it he was either being the universe’s best tour guide or lecturing them on some topic. “Up till then New York was a boom town, the Roaring Twenties, and then…”  
  
“The Wall Street Crash, yeah, when was that, 1929?”  
  
“Yeah. Whole economy wiped out overnight. Thousands of people unemployed. Suddenly the huddled masses doubled in number with nowhere to go. So they ended up here in Central Park.”  
  
“What? They actually live in the park? In the middle of the city?”  
  
“It’s not so odd,” Rose said tightly. “You’d be surprised the kind of places people go when they’ve got nowhere else. Mum used to never let me go play in the park on the estate after sundown because people liked to sleep under the slide.”  
  
“But that’s horrible!”  
  
“Wouldn’t be surprised if several dozen people sleep in Hyde Park every night in our time. I considered it, once.”  
  
“Why?” the Doctor asked sharply.  
  
Rose shrugged. “It was just after I’d left Jimmy. Didn’t feel like facin’ Mum yet. Couldn’t, really. I was on my way down there then I changed my mind and decided to sleep at Shareen’s for a bit. Figured it’d be safer.”  
  
“Rose, you–”  
  
“Leave it. S’over an’ done with, Doctor.”  
  
The smelled Hooverville before they saw it. The smoke from the fires, food cooking, trash, and poorly washed bodies, all mixed together to form a smell that wasn’t unfamiliar to Rose after growing up where she had and travelling the universe. Then they saw the smoke over the treetops and then the first homes of the shantytown came into view. Dozens and dozens of poorly made buildings, some of them–the lucky ones–were made of wood and stone, and the rest were made from sheets of metal, rubber, cardboard, tires, and other materials people had found to work with. Some of them were just tents.  
  
Three long planks held up on two wooden poles with the word “Hooverville” painted in white designated the main entrance. The three travellers felt solemn as they passed beneath it. Garments hung from lines, people gathered around fires in barrels, one man passed them pushing a bike. Some of the “houses” had chairs or tables in front of them, there were a few portable stoves. Rose spotted a small American flag fastened to one of the poles holding up a tent house. There was a signpost ahead of them with wooden slabs pointing every which way with street names and places like  _42nd Street_  and  _Brooklyn_. Maybe someone was trying to be funny. Or maybe they needed something like that to make them feel at least somewhat at home.  
  
People watched them come. Acknowledged their arrival with stares or nods; took in their nice, if unconventional clothes. Some only spared them a passing glance, not recognizing them but figuring they were just three more people out on the streets needing a place.   
  
“Ordinary people,” the Doctor explained quietly, toning down his usual tour guide routine in order to avoid offending the people. On top of everything else they didn’t need to feel like creatures in the zoo that would be opened in another area of the park soon. “Lost their jobs. Couldn’t pay the rent and they lost everything.”   
  
They passed the tent of a barber, designated by spiraling red and white pipe set on the top of one of the support poles. A man was sitting on a barrel in front getting his hair trimmed. They watched the travelers go past.  
  
“There are places like this all over America. No one’s helping them.”  
  
Rose huddled her arms close to her chest, feeling out of place. For all the troubles she had growing up, she’d had it good compared to these people. That girl over there in the rocking chair, she looked about twenty, she might’ve had a mother and a father here or somewhere, but the only roof over her head was a tarp. The only clothes she had were the ones on her back or hanging from the clothesline. Sometimes the power went out on the Estate or the heater was faulty. That girl didn’t have any power or a heater. Just that fire and some blankets.  
  
She glanced at Martha who also was looking uncomfortable, her arms folded as well.   
  
“You only come to Hooverville when there’s nowhere else to go,” he told them quietly and they believed him.  
  
“YOU THIEVING LOWLIFE!”   
  
Ahead of them a scuffle was beginning. A black man, the one who’d shouted, knocked a white man to the ground. The black man yelled angrily at him about waiting for bread, swiping at him and kicking while two other men tried to hold him back. The white man got to his feet, claiming innocence, and the black man slugged him. From what she could hear, it seemed to Rose that they were fighting over a loaf of bread. That’s how desperate they were.  
  
A middle-aged black man wearing a beige captain’s coat emerged from a green tent, took in the ruckus before him, and strode towards them with purpose, placing a brown hat on top of his head. “Cut that out!” he shouted. “CUT IT OUT!” he bellowed when they continued to fight. He grabbed both the fighting men and shoved them apart. “Right now!”  
  
“He stole my bread!” the younger man shouted, pointing accusingly.   
  
“That’s enough!” the older man snapped then turned to the white man. “Did you take it?”   
  
“I don’t know what happened he just went crazy!” the white man answered. The younger black man lunged at him and the older one had to force them apart again. He turned to the white man once more. “Now, think real careful before you lie to me.”  
  
“I’m starving, Solomon,” the white man said after a moment.  
  
The man, Solomon, held out his hand expectantly and the white man hesitated for a moment, then lifted the side of his coat and pulled out a single loaf of bread. The crowd that had gathered groaned and grumbled at the sight. “We’re all starvin’. We all got family somewhere,” Solomon said and he broke the bread in half, handing one to each of them. “No stealing and no fighting. You know the rules.”  
  
He turned to address the crowd standing around him. “Thirteen years ago I fought in the Great War. A lot of us did. And the only reason we got through was because we stuck together! No matter how bad things get, we still act like human beings. It’s all we got.”  
  
He looked between the two of them pointedly and they walked their separate ways. The crowd of people went on about their business now that the brief entertainment was over and the Doctor quietly told Martha and Rose to follow him.  
  
“I suppose that makes you the boss around here,” the Doctor said.  
  
Solomon looked at them as he walked towards a fire pit. “And, uh, who might you be?”  
  
“He’s the Doctor. She’s Rose. I’m Martha.”  
  
“A Doctor? Ha. Well…we got stockbrokers–” he nodded to a man sleeping in a chair, “–we’ve got a lawyer–” a man rubbing his hands as he walked towards a fire barrel “–but you’re the first doctor. Neighbourhood gets classier by the day.” He held out his hands to warm them over the fire.   
  
“How many people live here?” Martha asked after a moment.   
  
“Any one time, hundreds. No place else to go. But I will say this about Hooverville: we’re a truly equal society. Black, white–all the same. All starving.” He chuckled once. “So you’re welcome, all of you. But tell me, Doctor you’re a man of learning, right? Explain this to me.”  
  
They followed Solomon around a tent and looked over the treetops at the empire state building. “That there is going to be tallest building in the world. How come they can do that and we got people starving in the heart of Manhattan?”  
  
The Doctor had no answer, not one that would satisfy him anyway.   
  
“Because it’s easier,” Rose said. “Because building somethin’ like that is easier than coming up with a solution. Because it puts eyes on your city–but high above everythin’. Everyone’s lookin’ at how beautiful it is up there so they don’t see how awful it is down here. An’ the rich people, the politicians, they think that since they’re given some men jobs workin’ that it’s enough. Since some got work all must be happy. That’s what I think, anyway.”  
  
Solomon turned all the way and considered her with something close to a smile on his face. “You’re a smart young lady. I think you might be right. Now answer me this: if that’s the answer, then why doesn’t it make anything better?”  
  
“B-Because…” She had to think about it but in the end all she could come up with was: “Because nothin’ can. Not yet.”  
  
Solomon nodded but she couldn’t tell whether or not he was satisfied with her answer. He simply turned and strode back over to his tent.  
  
“That was good,” the Doctor told her quietly. “Some people will spend the whole Depression asking themselves those questions and in the end they’ll be no more satisfied with their answers than with yours.”  
  
“We should give them our money,” Martha said. “You’ve got ten dollars left, at least. We can walk back to Battery Park, it won’t kill us.”  
  
“And who would we give it to? Hmm?” Those hungry men? Solomon? That woman over there with children? Or that man with no leg? Who do you think deserves it more, Martha?”  
  
“W-we could divide it up…”  
  
“And we’d probably cause a fuss. People would want to know why they didn’t get any. It won’t save them. Won’t even last long enough to make a difference. You’ve seen worse than this before, Martha.”  
  
“I know but…but they…I mean they’re…”  
  
“Human?” The Doctor looked down at her. “So because they’re human it makes their suffering worse? It doesn’t. I know you feel extra sympathy towards them because they’re your species, but in the end the universe is always going to be full of people hungry and homeless, and their species doesn’t make their suffering any lesser or greater than the others suffering. If you’ve been with us this long already and haven’t figured it out yet that one’s species alone doesn’t determine their importance, then why should I let you stay?”  
  
Martha looked away, humbled from his chastisement, and rubbed her arms against the chill from both the ice in his voice and the cold wind.  
  
The Doctor strode towards Solomon, pulling the newspaper out of his pocket. “So…” he said to get his attention. Solomon turned. “Men gone missing–is this true?”  
  
Solomon’s eyes flicked down to the newspaper and he took it from the Doctor’s hands. “It’s true, alright.” He motioned with his head for them to follow him into his tent.   
  
The Doctor didn’t go beyond the doorway though and Rose and Martha had to peer in through the open flat. It was oddly quaint, with a table, two chairs, a bed, a drawer, a stove, and lanterns hanging from the poles or resting on the table. It was warm, too.  
  
“But what does missing mean? Men must come and go here all the time. It’s not like anyone’s keeping a register.”  
  
Solomon sat down in the chair, removing his hat. “Come on in,” he invited.   
  
The Doctor sat down in the chair next to Solomon, resting his chin in his hand. Rose and Martha perched on the drawer, right near the delicious warmth from the stove.  
  
“This is different,” Solomon said.  
  
Rose frowned. “What do you mean ‘different’? Missin’s missin’, isn’t it?”  
  
“Not in this case. Something’s taking them. At night. We hear something. Someone calls out for help. By the time we get there, they’re gone. Like they vanish into thin air.”  
  
“And you’re sure someone’s taking them?” the Doctor asked.  
  
“Doctor, when you got next to nothing, you hold on to the little you got,” Solomon said as if to a child. “Knife, blanket–you take it with you. You don’t leave bread uneaten, fire still burning.”  
  
“Have you been to the police?” Martha inquired.   
  
“Yeah, we tried that. Another deadbeat goes missing, big deal.”  
  
“So,” the Doctor said, rubbing his ear thoughtfully, “the question is, who’s taking them and what for?”  
  
“Solomon!” a voice called from outside the tent. A young boy, about sixteen with a cap on his head and a southern accent, burst into the tent. “Solomon! Mr. Diagoras is here.”  
  
Solomon’s eyes widened. He grabbed his hat and headed out with the three time travelers following close behind.  
  
A man in a black, red-trimmed coat that probably cost enough to feed the entirety of Hooverville for at least a day, stood on a crate with two tough-looking guys in black pinstripe suits–bodyguards–and was speaking to the crowd gathering.   
  
“I need men, volunteers. I’ve got a little work for you, and you sure look like you could use the money.”  
  
“Yeah, what is the money!” the southern boy called out.  
  
“A dollar a day.”  
  
People scoffed and laughed mockingly. Even for the times, a dollar was ridiculous.   
  
“What’s the work?” Solomon asked and people seemed to relax when he brought attention to himself. Even if he wasn’t officially in charge, Solomon had power amongst the people. They looked up to him, respected him.  _Solomon is here. Solomon will look out for us._  
  
“A little trip down the sewers,” Diagoras said and people laughed, scoffed, and shook their heads. “Got a tunnel that collapsed needs clearing and fixing. Any takers?”  
  
“Uh-uh.” The southern boy shook his head. He seemed to speak for all of them.  
  
“A dollar a day is a slave wage,” Solomon objected loudly. People chimed in their agreement. “Men don’t always come back up, do they?”  
  
“Accidents happen,” Diagoras dismissed.  
  
“What do you mean?” the Doctor asked. “What sort of ‘accidents’?”  
  
“You don’t need the work? That’s fine. Anybody else?”  
  
The Doctor raised his hand.  
  
“Enough with the questions!”  
  
“Oh, no, no, no, no. I’m volunteering. I’ll go.”  
  
Knowing full well she couldn’t stay in Hooverville while the Doctor went gallivanting around down in the sewers, Martha lifted her hand. “I’ll kill you for this.”  
  
“I’ll help her,” Rose added with her hand in the air as well.   
  
The Doctor chuckled.  
  
“Anybody else?” Diagoras called. Solomon and the southern boy raised their hands as well.


	19. Trap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

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Rose Tyler prided herself on being a patient, restrained woman. She’d always been–had to be, what with Jackie bringing a myriad of men home over the years and a hair saloon being run in the kitchen half the time. But she’d gained heaps of both since she joined the Doctor in the TARDIS years ago.   
  
Of course she had! She traipsed across the universe with a madman in a blue box that was bigger on the inside, for goodness sakes. Putting up with the Doctor alone required a lot of both. In this body, at least, he was rude (and not ginger), crass, annoying sometimes, with an unstoppable gob, and a penchant for ambling off to another topic whenever they got close to anything regarding their relationship.  
  
And that wasn’t even counting the tolerance required to put up with the things that had happened during their travels. She’d been kidnapped, held hostage, cussed out in dozens of dialects, thrown in jail, set to be sacrificed, accused of witchery (many times), almost eaten (nearly as many times), and danged over multiple pits filled with multiple things that would hurt and/or kill her (with the exception of that one time she was dangled over a pit of cotton candy, but they didn’t talk about that one).   
  
She’d been forced to put up with things that were disgusting to avoid offending the aliens they were around at the time. She’d been kissed (or the species equivalent thereof), blatantly groped, flirted with more times than she cared to count, mistaken for a whore, and almost forcibly married several dozen times. Once she’d even gotten up to the altar before her Time Lord  _finally_  got around to saving her.   
  
She’d been in horrible places that she never wished to revisit. Almost every jail/dungeon she’s ever been thrown in (except for the one made of candy canes but they don’t talk about that one either), all but two of the prominently swamp planets (especially the one Degobah from  _Star Wars_  was based off of), the jungles of Torro where one in every three vines was carnivorous, Ancient Japan, Krop Tor, Justica, and the colony planet where it’d been a crime to tell stories, hope, and dream. Just to name a few.   
  
After all that, though, after all the dozens of horrible places she’s been, the horrible things she’s had to endure…Rose has never gotten used to walking through sewers and she doesn’t think she ever will. She also had no desire to ever be in enough sewers to get used to them, thank you very much.   
  
As she followed Solomon, the southern boy named Frank, and Martha into the sewer tunnels, Rose Tyler was using every ounce of self-control she had to not cuss and fuss. It was wet and dark and it stank and she would’ve rather stayed in Hooverville than come down here.  
  
“Just got to stick together,” Frank told them. “It’s easy to get lost. It’s like a huge rabbit warren. Could hide an army down here.”  
  
“You talk like you roam the sewers every other day,” Rose said, resisting the urge to plug her nose. Her lips were curled in disgust, though.  
  
“I’ve had my fair share,” he admitted. Grinning, he looked at her. “And yourself?”  
  
“More than you.”  
  
Frank laughed. “Is that so?”  
  
“Bet you ten quid.”  
  
“Alright. How many?”  
  
“Doctor,” she called over shoulder. “About how many sewers do you think we’ve been in since we started out?”  
  
His reply came a moment later. “Seventy or so–depends on your definition of sewer, really.”   
  
Frank’s jaw dropped. “W-well, alright then!” He laughed after a second. “I guess you win that one. But, uh, what’s a ‘quid’?”  
  
Rose blinked as the Doctor caught up to them and fell instep beside her. “Um…a dollar.”  
  
“Well, uh, I’d pay up, but I haven’t even got ten cents.”   
  
She laughed at him, her tongue between her teeth. “It’s alright. Didn’t expect you to pay up anyway. If it makes you feel any better, he owes me about a hundred quid by now.” She turned the beam of her torch towards the Doctor.   
  
“A smart man pays off his debts,” Solomon told him sagely.  
  
“A smart man doesn’t make a bet with Rose Tyler,” the Doctor countered. Solomon chuckled. “She always wins. Even if she ticks off a queen in the process.”  
  
Frank’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head. “You’ve met a queen?”   
  
“We’ve met a lot of people,” he said smoothly. “We travel.”  
  
“So, what about you, Frank?” Martha asked. “You’re not from around these parts, are you?”  
  
He laughed. “Oh, you can talk. No, I’m Tennessee born an’ bred.”  
  
“So how come you’re here?”  
  
“Oh, my daddy died. Mama…couldn’t afford to feed us all. So I’m the oldest, up to me to feed myself. So I put on my coat, hitched up here on the railroads. There’s a whole lot of runaways in camp younger than me. From all over; Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas… Solomon–he keeps a lookout for us. So, what about you? You’re a long way from home.”  
  
Martha smiled. “I’m with them. We’re travellers, like he said. I worked at a hospital back in London, and one day things went mad. These two were there, I helped them sort it, and they invited me along. We’ve been all over but never to New York before. I’ve always wanted to see it.”  
  
“Well, you stick with me, you’ll be alright.”  
  
Rose wished she could catch Martha’s eye right now because she’d told her–she’d told her she’d be getting all sorts of flirting in time. If she hadn’t believed Rose back then, she definitely did now.  
  
“So this Diagoras bloke, who is he then?” the Doctor asked Solomon.   
  
Solomon sighed. “A couple of months ago, he was just another foreman. Now it seems like he’s running most of Manhattan.”  
  
“How did he manage that, then?”  
  
“These are strange times. A man can go from being King of the Hill to the lowest of the low overnight.”   
  
The Doctor noticed something on the ground in front of them and lowered the beam of his torch downwards. Rose followed it and she squinted, trying to make out what that lump on the floor was.  
  
“It’s just for some folks it works the other way ‘round.” Solomon finished.   
  
It was bumpy and glowing green in the torchlight and whatever it was it wasn’t human. “Whoa!” the Doctor exclaimed. Their party halted.  
  
Martha gasped, peering down at it. “Is it radioactive or something?”  
  
Solomon and Frank kept back while the three of them knelt down around it. A completely revolting smell wafted up from the goopy thing, smacking Rose in the face a thousand times harder than the sewer odor had. She stopped breathing, placing her gloved hand firmly over her nose and mouth and worked to stop her stomach from rebelling.  
  
Across from her, Martha gagged. “It’s gone off, whatever it is.”  
  
The Doctor pulled out his glasses and put them on then cautiously pulled the thing off the ground. The green glow died as he lifted it out of the light filtering in from above.  
  
“And you’ve  _got_  to pick it up.”  
  
“Doctor.” Rose lowered her hand from her mouth so he would hear her clearly. “I swear to God…if you  _lick_  that thing–”  
  
“Oh don’t worry, I’m not going to lick it. Honestly.”   
  
But he did lift it right to his nose and sniff. Martha’s hand flew to her mouth again and Rose closed her eyes. The Doctor was  _not_  touching that thing. He wasn’t.   
  
Judging from the squishy sounds she heard, he was turning it over in his hands. She peeked one eye open for confirmation. Yep. There was no way he was holding her hand, even through her gloves, until he washed his several times.   
  
“Composite organic matter,” he murmured. “Martha, medical opinion?”  
  
She lowered her hand. “It’s not human. I know that.”   
  
“No, it’s not. Rose?”  
  
“No bloody idea. Not something I’ve seen before.” And he was still running his fingers across it! She shuddered.  
  
“Nor me. And I’ll tell you something else,” he said suddenly, standing up. We must be at least half a mile in. I don’t see any signs of a collapse. Do you? So why did Mr. Diagoras send us down here?”  
  
“Where are we now?” Martha asked. “What’s up above?”  
  
“Well, we’re right underneath Manhattan.”  
  
“Let’s keep moving,” Solomon said, pulling his coat tighter around himself. He took the lead this time with Frank right on his heels with Martha.  
  
The Doctor pocketed the  _thing_  and shook his hands off. Rose leaped out of the way with a startled sound of disgust. He grinned and held his hand out to her, fingers wiggling invitingly. She wrinkled her nose, lifted her chin airily, and stomped right past him.   
  
“So, uh, do you see that kind of stuff often in the sewers?” Frank asked the girls.  
  
“No,” Rose said at once. “Nothing like that. Except that one time, but it turned out to be a piece of fruit.”  
  
“Hush up,” Solomon ordered. “Your voice can travel for miles down here. I don’t want whatever left that thing behind to find us. Let’s just find that collapse and get the heck outta here.”  
  
The younger members of the group fell silent. Rose fell instep beside the Doctor as the continued on, but she still refused to hold his hand. Martha walked beside Frank, who seemed to have taken a shine to her, and Solomon led them. They continued through the tunnels, rounding corners, hopping over puddles, and keeping an eye on the ground in case they found another like the disgusting thing currently in the Doctor’s pocket. Solomon sped up.   
  
Rose was beginning to get nervous. Just how far had they come? Were they lost? What was going on down here? Could they get back? Of course they could. The Doctor with his superior brain had probably noted and logged every single turn they’d taken. He could guide them back to the entrance just as easily as she could if there were bright neon signs pointing the way. She slid her arm around his (she was not going to hold his hand, dammit) and leaned into his side. It felt colder and was it just her, or had the smell gotten worse?  
  
 _I want to go back_. And she would say it out loud if she were any less than the woman she was.   
  
“We’re way beyond half a mile,” Solomon growled. “There’s no collapse, nothing.”  
  
“That Diagoras bloke, was he lying?” Martha wondered.   
  
“Looks like it,” the Doctor said grimly.  
  
Frank looked from tunnel to tunnel. “So why did he want people to come down here?”  
  
“Solomon, I think it’s time you took these three back. I’ll be much quicker on my own.”  
  
“Oh, don’t you even think about–” Rose started to say but she stopped abruptly when a squealing sound echoed through the tunnels. It seemed to come from every tunnel all at once. Their heads whipped around.  
  
“What the hell was that?” Solomon asked no one in particular. No one answered him.  
  
“HELLO?” Frank shouted.  
  
“Frank!”  
  
“Shhh!”  
  
“Shhhhhh!”  
  
“What if it’s one of the folk gone missing?” he snapped back quietly. “You’d be scared half mad, down here on your own.”   
  
“You think they’re still alive?” the Doctor asked.   
  
“Heck, we–we ain’t seen no bodies down here. Maybe they just got lost.”  
  
Another squealing echoed through the tunnels, rebounding off the walls and getting muffled in the water, magnifying and muting and making it impossible to tell where it came from.  
  
“I ain’t never heard nobody make a sound like that,” Solomon said.   
  
“That’s not human,” Martha whispered to Rose. She shook her head.  
  
“Where’s it comin’ from?” Frank asked.   
  
The Doctor edged down a different tunnel, shining his torch along the walls. Rose protested quietly but fell silent when the squealing started up again.  
  
“Sounds like there’s more than one of ‘em.”   
  
“This way,” the Doctor ordered.  
  
“No, that way,” Solomon said as the noise came again.  
  
Neither of them were right, as it turned out, because when Martha turned the light of her torch down a tunnel she noticed something huddling at the end. It was wearing a jumpsuit–red, by the look of it–and it appeared to be a…  
  
No, impossible.   
  
“Doctor,” she hissed.   
  
The others turned, shinning their lights on the thing huddled at the end. Frank and Solomon didn’t seem too bothered, obviously couldn’t see something horribly wrong with it. Rose did, she could tell from the way her nostrils flared and her eyes widened the tiniest bit.  
  
“Who are you?” Solomon asked. The thing slowly lifted its head.  
  
“Are you lost?” Frank asked. “Can you understand me?” He took a cautious step forward, then another. “I’ve been thinkin’ about folk lost down–”  
  
“It’s alright, Frank,” the Doctor said, holding his hand up to stop him. “Just stay back. Let me have a look.”  
  
The Doctor took a step forward, speaking to the figure down the tunnel. “He’s got a point, though, my mate Frank. I’d hate to be stuck down here all on my own.” The thing squealed, almost as if in agreement, and he kept walking. “We know the way out. Daylight, if you come with us.”   
  
He knelt down in front of the creature, shining the torch directly at its face. Martha had seen right: it was a pig, a humanoid pig.   
  
“Oh, but what are you?” the Doctor queried.   
  
“Is that, uh…some kind of carnival mask?” Solomon asked.  
  
“No, it’s real.” The Doctor looked at him gravely then turned back to the pig and murmured words that didn’t quite reach their ears.  
  
Rose stiffened when she saw the shadows moving on the wall. Then figures appeared around the corner, moving slowly towards the Doctor and the creature on the floor. More pig men. “Doctor!” she called. “Behind you!”  
  
The Doctor turned and saw them coming. He looked once more at the pig man on the ground as he rose to his feet and backed away slowly. The horde followed, including the one that had been on the ground. The bait in a trap Mr. Diagoras had delivered them into. Now they knew why people didn’t always come back up.   
  
They continued to slowly retreat and the pig men advanced at the same pace. It was simply a matter of who would bolt first.   
  
“Right, then. Martha, Rose, Frank, Solomon.”   
  
“What?” Martha whimpered.   
  
“I think, um…basically…”  
  
“Run?” Rose asked.  
  
“RUN!” he agreed and they did just that. The pigs brayed loudly and charged.   
  
They ran without direction, taking turns at random. Solomon and Frank, even with their longer legs, couldn’t quite pace Rose and Martha though they sure as hell tried. The guys may have been used to living it rough, but this was how the girls lived. Running for their lives was as ordinary as drinking tea. Legs and arms pumping, sucking quick breaths of air in, they practically flew through the tunnel. They cast quick glances over their shoulder at the pigs that pursued them relentlessly, squealing horribly all the while.  
  
Martha skidded to a halt in an intersection, Rose stopping just a few feet in front of her. “Where are we going?!” she cried.  
  
“This way!” the Doctor shouted and led them down the right tunnel. Rose didn’t care when he grabbed her hand–she just held tighter.   
  
  
The pigs followed, snorting and squealing. Rose decided that if never saw another pig again it would be too soon and when she got back to the TARDIS she would have pork chops for dinner.  _Good plan, not helping,_  she thought furiously.   
  
The Doctor changed direction midstride, and her momentum kept Rose moving, but he didn’t let go of her hand and very nearly yanked her arm out of it’s socket. He pushed off the wall with a grunt and pulled her down an adjacent tunnel. “There’s a ladder! Come on!” he shouted.   
  
He let go of her hand, sliding the torch onto his arm, and pulled the sonic screwdriver from his pocket. He climbed up the ladder, switching the sonic on, and worked on unsealing the manhole above them. Rose’s torch didn’t have a loop so she discarded it and climbed after him. The manhole lid came loose and he pushed it up and out of the way. He pulled himself out then turned around and grabbed Rose’s hand. She jumped down from the block and stumbled forward, hands reaching out automatically to catch herself and she hit a wall.   
  
Okay, not outside then.   
  
From below, she heard Solomon shout, “Frank!”   
  
She turned around in time to catch Martha who was shaking like a leaf and close to tears. Martha was more resilient to things than she had been when she’d joined them two months ago, but everyone had their limits.   
  
Solomon emerged from the manhole and then called down to Frank.  
  
The squealing picked up again, louder and more vicious than before as the pigs realized their prey was escaping.   
  
The Doctor and Solomon reached down to him, urging him to hurry. Rose couldn’t see what was going on below but she heard the squealing and Frank screaming and Solomon and the Doctor shouting and Martha was crying. She hugged Martha tightly and squeezed her eyes shut.   
  
Her eyes flew open at the Doctor’s long, desperate scream of “NO!”  
  
Solomon pulled the Doctor out of the manhole and threw him to the ground, reaching up to pull the iron lid back over the hole. Frank was still down there.  
  
“No!” Rose echoed the Doctor’s scream.   
  
“We can’t go after him!” Solomon said roughly.  
  
“I’ve got to go back down!” the Doctor argued, reaching for the lid even as Solomon rotated it shut. “We can’t just leave him!”   
  
“NO!” Solomon grabbed the Doctor by the lapels of his coat and pushed him away from the manhole. Martha backed into the corner and Rose let her go. She wrapped her arms around herself, pressed one gloved hand over her mouth, and tried to calm her racing heart.  
  
“I’m not losing anybody else! Those creatures were from hell, hell itself. If we go after him, they’ll take us all! There’s nothing we can do.” Solomon shook his head, wiping his eye with the back of his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said to the lid that had sealed Frank down there with the pigs.   
  
A shapely young woman with short, curled blonde hair stepped around a shelf with a gun in her hand. “Alright then, put ‘em up,” she ordered in a thick New York accent that was even more pronounced than Solomon’s.   
  
Martha put her hands into the air immediately, still shaken, but Rose gritted her teeth and didn’t move. From bums fighting over bread, to pigs with teeth, to a blonde with a gun–this day was just getting better and better.   
  
She cocked the gun purposefully. “Hands in the air, and no funny business.” Solomon, the Doctor, and Rose lifted their hands in air. Oh yeah. Better and better by the minute. “Now, tell me, you schmucks, what have you done with Laszlo?”  
  
“Who’s Laszlo?” Martha asked.  
  
The blonde narrowed her eyes and moved her gun between all of them. She rubbed her red lips together, considering, then jerked her head towards the way she came. “Alright you four…start walking. Out the door and turn left. And no funny business!” she added.   
  
She stepped out of the way and motioned them forward with the gun. “Come on, come on, I ain’t got all night!”  
  
Solomon and the Doctor exchanged looks then Solomon grudgingly led the party out. The Doctor looked at his two companions and nodded towards the door. Rose went first, glaring at the blonde as she passed. They’d come out in some sort of storage room, it seemed. There were costume racks and prop shelves and several dummies with wigs and masks. Though what kind of storage room had a manhole in it?  
  
The blonde directed them down the hall then told Solomon to open up one of the doors with a star on it. She marched past them into the dressing room, flipping on the light, and plopped down in the chair in front of a vanity. Almost as an afterthought, she pointed the gun at them again. They stood in the doorway unsurely, glancing at each other, and the Doctor kept himself between the gun and his companions. The blonde picked up a cotton ball and sighed.  
  
“So, um, who’s Laszlo?” Rose asked.  
  
“Laszlo’s my boyfriend,” the blonde said. “ _Was_  my boyfriend, until he disappeared two weeks ago–no letter, no goodbye, no nothing. And I’m not stupid,” she added, pointing to herself with the gun. “I know some guys are just pigs, but not my Laszlo.”   
  
She gestured angrily and they all flinched as the gun was momentarily pointed at them. At this rate, one of them was accidentally going to be shot. “I mean, what kind of guy asks you to meet his mom before he vamooses?”  
  
The Doctor lifted his hand. “It might–it might just help if you put that down.”   
  
“Huh?” she asked, open-mouthed. Her eyes flicked to the gun then rolled. “Oh, sure.”   
  
She tossed it carelessly onto the chair. Solomon cringed, the Doctor jumped a bit and Martha and Rose ducked behind him. “Oh come on!” she laughed, waving off their reactions and picked up the cotton again. “It’s not real. It’s just a prop. It was either that or a spear.”   
  
Rose cracked a grin.  _Not bad._  
  
“What do you think happened to Laszlo?” Martha asked, stepping out from behind the Doctor.   
  
“I wish I knew. One minute, he’s there. The next, zip–vanished.” She dropped the cotton onto her vanity desk.   
  
The Doctor walked into the room. “Listen, um…what was your name?”   
  
“Tallulah.”   
  
“Tallulah.”  
  
“Three L’s and an ‘H.””  
  
“Right. Um, we can try and find Laszlo, but he’s not the only one. There are people disappearing every night.”  
  
“And there are creatures,” Solomon added with a nervous glance in the direction they’d come from. “Such creatures.”  
  
“What do you mean, creatures?” Tallulah drawled.   
  
“Look, listen, just trust me. Everyone is in danger,” the Doctor said, reaching into his pocket, and he pulled out the lumpy thing. “I need to find out exactly what this is. Because then I’ll know exactly what we’re fighting.”  
  
Tallulah leaned away in her seat and made a noise of disgust.   
  
“And I held his hand just a few minutes ago,” Rose told her.   
  
Tallulah shuddered. “Well look, I don’t know nothing about…whatever that is, but if it’s gonna help you find Laszlo, you’re welcome to anything you can find around here. Just don’t tell nobody I said so–you got that? You get caught I had nothin’ to do with this or else I lose my job. And keep outta the way ‘cause we got a show in an hour.”   
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“Yeah. Hey, girls.” She smiled at Rose and Martha. “You can wait here with me if you want.”  
  
“Oh, that’s sounds great,” Martha said eagerly. After trecking through the sewers and being pursued by pigs, relaxing backstage in an actual New York revue sounded brilliant. She walked over to the couch against the wall and flopped down, leaning back against the soft, squishy cushions.  
  
Rose, on the other hand, didn’t acknowledge Tallulah’s offer, and instead looked up at the Doctor. “Can I help?”  
  
He shook his head. “No, not really. Stay here, have a seat. Watch the show.”  
  
“Fine, but one thing, mister.” She pointed at him severely. “No running off without me. I mean it. I don’t fancy havin’ to track you down to save you.”  
  
He smiled warmly. “Now you know how I feel whenever you wander off.”  
  
“Doctor.”  
  
“Alright, I promise I won’t.”  
  
She smiled. “Good.”  
  
The Doctor went off to construct something that would help him figure out what the hell that blob was, Tallulah shooed Solomon away and shut the door behind him. Rose plopped down on the couch next to Martha and shucked her gloves.  
  
“So!” she said brightly. “I never got your names.”  
  
“Why do you need them? Don’t you have your own?”  
  
Tallulah laughed. “Oh, I like you. But come on, who are you?”  
  
“I’m Rose and this is Martha. The tall one was the Doctor and the other was Solomon.”   
  
“Well, how do ya do?” she said and plopped back down in her chair. “You’re from across the water, aint’chya?”  
  
They nodded.  
  
“Believe it or not, I’ve never been there. So what’s it like in New Jersey?”  
  
Rose and Martha glanced at each other.  
  
“Naw I’m just kidding. Come on, I’m not that stupid. I know a London accent when I hear it. What are you doing in New York? The Depression hittin’ you hard over there yet?”  
  
“Dunno,” Martha admitted. “We haven’t been home in a long while. We’re travellers.”  
  
“Oh,” she gasped, “lucky.” Tallulah glanced at the clock jumped out of her chair. She closed the door then turned to the costume rack next to her. She pulled a hanger with a silver sparkling leotard out and held it up. “Sorry, I gotta get changed real quick.”  
  
“Go ahead. We can step out.”  
  
“Don’t matter,” she told them. But they did politely avert their eyes when she changed out of her dress and into the costume. She rifled through the odds and ends on her vanity and drawers, muttering darkly. “Aw nuts. Either of you see a tiara with a halo anywhere?”  
  
They shifted around on the couch, lifting cushions and the thin drapery, then searched the room with their eyes.   
  
“Is that it?” Martha pointed.  
  
Tallulah followed her finger. “Yes! That’s it! Oh, thank you, honey.” She plucked the headpiece from a shelf above one of the costume racks and sat back down in her chair.  
  
“So, what do you play?”  
  
“An angel, I guess,” Tallulah said as she placed the crown-halo on her head. “I sing the song, too.”   
  
Rose arched her eyebrows. “Looks a bit too skimpy for an angel, no offense.”  
  
Tallulah smiled. “Well, the song’s called  _Heaven and Hell_. The other girls are all devils. And I only mean that literally about one of ‘em.” She giggled, Martha laughed, and Rose found herself liking Tallulah.   
  
She put a pair of strappy silver heels on and a diamond necklace around her neck. “Lazlo used to tell me I looked like an angel even without the costume.”  
  
“He sounds like a nice guy,” Rose told her. “You’re lucky.”  
  
“Lucky as anyone can be these days, yeah,” she agreed, putting in one of her earrings, and sighed. “Laszlo, he’d wait for me after the show, walk me home, like I was a lady. He’d leave a flower for me on my dressing table–every day, just a single rosebud.”  
  
“Haven’t you reported him missing?” Martha stood up from the couch and walked over to the vanity.  
  
“Sure, but he’s just a stagehand. Who cares? The management certainly don’t.”  
  
Solomon had said something similar. The police didn’t care about people in Hooverville going missing and they didn’t care about missing stagehands, either. They were just little people on the road to starvation. So what if they got knocked off a bit sooner? Not like they were going to make a big difference anyway. It made Rose’s blood boil. The police had been like that about people from the Estate, too.   
  
A woman named Christa Mason used to live two floors down with her son, Aaron. Rose hadn’t known Aaron well since he’d been six years her senior, but one day he vanished, seemingly into thin air. No note, no goodbye, no nothing. The police were called, of course, but Christa Mason hadn’t had the stubborn persistence of Jackie Tyler. Aaron was soon written off as a runaway and forgotten about. He could’ve been kidnapped, he could’ve been killed, he could’ve run off with a madman in a blue box and died on some alien planet–it didn’t matter. He was just another Estate kid who wouldn’t have amounted to anything anyway.   
  
Rose had probably been written off as the same a few weeks after she’d disappeared with the Doctor. And look at what she’d become. She had no job, no A-levels, no home (on Earth), no family…but she had saved the universe, she had all of time and space to explore, and she was in love with the reason the Earth was still spinning.   
  
“Can’t you just kick up a fuss or something?” Martha asked.   
  
“Okay, so then they fire me.”  
  
“Bet they’d listen to you.” She leaned down to look at herself in the mirror. “You’re one of the stars.”  
  
Tallulah smiled. “Oh, honey, I got one song in a backstreet revue, and that’s only ‘cause Heidi Chicane broke her ankle, which had nothin’ to do with me, whatever anybody says. I can’t afford to make a fuss.”   
  
Martha was fiddling idly with a tube of lipstick, looking doubtful.  
  
“If I don’t make this months rent, then before you know it, I’m in Hooverville.”  
  
“Okay. I get it.” Martha held up her hands.   
  
“It’s not right, though,” Rose said vehemently, rising to her feet. “And if it wouldn’t get me arrested and you sacked I would have a word with the management myself. Several, actually.”  
  
Tallulah smiled at them. “Thank you. But it’s the Depression, sweetie. Your heart might break, but the show goes on. ‘Cause if it stops, you starve.” She rose from her chair, her expression sad. “Every night, have to go out there, sing, dance, keep goin’, hopin’ he’s gonna come back.” Her face crumped and Rose pulled her into a hug.   
  
“I’m sorry,” Martha told her.  
  
“Me too,” Rose added.  
  
Tallulah sniffed, patting Rose on the back. “Hey, you’re lucky, though.” She pulled away and wiped her eye. “You’ve got yourself a forward thinking guy with that hot potato in the sharp suit.”  
  
“Oh, he’s not–I mean, we’re not–”  
  
“Aw, come off it, Rose.” Martha grinned and elbowed her. “You’re not fooling anyone.”  
  
“You’re not, really,” Tallulah agreed, spinning around her chair. “I’ve seen the way you look at him, it’s obvious.”  
  
“Yeah, well, we’re not a couple,” she mumbled, stuffing her hands into her jacket pockets.   
  
Tallulah plucked her wings off a chair and started to slide them up her arms. “He ain’t into musical theater, is he? What a waste.”  
  
Rose frowned in confusion but then it dawned on her. “Oh! Oh, no, no, he isn’t. Trust me. But it’s…it’s really complicated.”   
  
“Well, you got to live in hope,” Tallulah told her, adjusting the straps of her wings. “It’s the only thing that’s kept me going, ‘cause…well, look.” She picked a single, fresh white rosebud from her vanity and held it out for them to see. “On my dressing table, every day, still.”  
  
“Do you think it’s Laszlo?” Martha asked.  
  
“I don’t know. If he’s still around, why’s he being all secret, like he doesn’t want me to see him?”  
  
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”  
  
Tallulah sniffed once and sighed, setting the rose gently back onto her table.   
  
“Maybe he’s ashamed to face you?” Rose suggested.   
  
“But why? What could he have done that would make him think I don’t wanna see him?”  
  
There were hundreds of things she could think of, but Tallulah was already suffering. She didn’t need a list of possible atrocities her boyfriend may have committed, so Rose just shook her head. Tallulah sighed again then smiled tightly at Rose.  
  
“Well, the show must go on.”

 


	20. Daleks Under Manhattan

The Doctor was off somewhere working and they hadn’t seen any sign of Solomon, which meant he’d either left on his own or had been kicked out. So when Tallulah, bright eyed and excited, asked them to come watch the show, they agreed since they had nothing better to do and they were curious. They stood in the wings back stage safely beyond the view of the audience, but close enough to have a good view.  
  
The dancers flounced onto the stage and got into their places behind the curtain. There were nine of them total: eight devils–dark haired with red sequin dresses not unlike Tallulah’s, feathered horned hats, and a single large red feathered fan each–and Tallulah herself. The announcer introduced them over the loud speaker and the music began to play. Rose flashed Tallulah a thumbs up as the curtains opened. The crowd applauded and whistled appreciatively.  
  
Tallulah danced down the isle between the rows of devils up to the microphone. When she started to sing the devils began their dance routine.   
  
 _“You lured me in with your cold grey eyes  
Your simple smile and your bewitching lies  
One and one and one is three  
My bad, bad, angel, the Devil, and me.”_  
  
“Bit better than Shakespeare, yeah?” Rose muttered to Martha.  
  
She grinned, moving her shoulders to the music.  
  
 _“You put the Devil in me  
You put the Devil in me.  
You put the Devil in me.  
My bad, bad angel  
You put the Devil in me.” _  
  
Tallulah sashayed away from the microphone and joined the dancers. It was about this time that Martha noticed another person watching from the wings and for a moment her heart literally stopped beating. It was one of them! A pigman! Here, now!   
  
 _Wait, is he watching the show?_  
  
Yes, that was what he appeared to be doing. He wasn’t moving to attack them or lure them in he was just watching. But he was still on this side of the manhole, which meant there might have been others. Were they here to steal the dancers? Were they here for them? Where was the Doctor?  
  
She tapped on Rose’s shoulder quickly and pointed across the stage. When she spotted him her eyes widened and she swore under her breath. Martha jerked her head towards the pig and stepped out onto stage, ducking behind one of the dancers.   
  
“What are you doing?!” Rose hissed loudly but her voice was drowned out by a dancer who demanded the same thing.  
  
“Come back here, Martha!”   
  
Martha didn’t hear her over the music and darted to hide behind the next girl and accidentally grabbed her tail, causing them both to fall. Rose rolled her eyes and smacked her forehead. A quick glance at the pigman showed that he was still just watching the stage and if he’d noticed Martha, she didn’t worry him.   
  
Instead of going out onto stage, Rose circled back and found a path through the curtains behind the stage. He didn’t see her coming. From this close, she noticed something very, very crucial. He wasn’t entirely a pig, not like the others. So, either the species didn’t look like the ones that had chased them in the sewers until a certain part of life, or he only half pigman. What was the other half? Human? He looked somewhat human. But if one of his parents was human than he or she must’ve been seriously drunk…and desperate.  
  
She was literally just feet away from him when he suddenly jumped, startled, and stared in horror at the stage. Then she heard a woman scream and he bolted. Rose lunged, missed, and he yelped. She ran after him shouting, “Hey! Wait! Stop!”  
  
Martha ran off the stage and for a moment, stared at Rose, dumbfounded, as if walking around the stage hadn’t occurred to her. Then she shook her head quickly and followed Rose and the pigman.   
  
He ran down the hallway where the dressing rooms were, heading in the direction of the prop room, no doubt hoping to escape down the manhole.   
  
“Just wait!” Rose shouted after him as he disappeared into the prop room. She followed and Martha arrived just a moment later.  
  
“Where’d he go?” she panted. They heard a clanging sound, like metal on metal, and knew that he was gone.   
  
Rose took a few deep breaths then scowled at Martha. “Walking across stage? That was your brilliant plan? If you’d just gone around we coulda had him!”  
  
“I didn’t even think about it,” she admitted.   
  
Rose saw the pigman but had no time to react before it grabbed Martha. It was a full pigman, as dangerous as the ones below. Martha screamed and Rose jumped at the pig, hitting and scratching at its face with her nails. It squealed and hit her with its forearm, sending her careening into a prop table. Pain flared in her hip and arm where she made contact with the table. It collapsed under the force, props clanging and scattering across the floor. She hit the ground hard.  
  
She moaned quietly and by the time she opened her eyes, Martha and the pigman were gone.   
  
“MARTHA! ROSE!”  
  
The Doctor burst into the prop room, looking around wildly, and saw her on the ground. He dropped to his knees beside her and touched her arm. “Rose? What happened?”   
  
She moaned again and lifted her head. “There was…there was this pigman, Doctor. He didn’t look like the rest.” She sat up, rubbing her bruised arm. “We chased him in here then another one showed up and grabbed Martha.”  
  
“Where is she?”  
  
Rose blinked, noticing Tallulah for the first time. She stood just behind the Doctor, her halo and wings gone and her eyes wide.   
  
“It took her.”  
  
The Doctor’s jaw tightened. “Can you walk?”  
  
“Think so,” she grunted as she got to her feet. He held onto her arm to steady her and she winced, rubbing her hip.   
  
“Are you hurt?”  
  
“I’m fine,” she said and pointed at the open manhole. “But Martha’s down there. Come on.”  
  
She pulled her gloves out of her pocket and put them on and the Doctor retrieved his coat from where he’d hung it on a hook.   
  
“Ooh. Where are you going?” Tallulah asked.  
  
“They’ve taken Martha. We’re going to get her,” the Doctor said, pulling his coat on.  
  
“Who’s taken her? What are you doing?”  
  
The Doctor didn’t respond, pushing the cover out of the way, and started down.   
  
“Stay here,” Rose told her then followed him.  
  
“I said, what the hell are you doin’?” Tallulah called down.  
  
The Doctor pulled out a small torch from his pocket and Rose went over to the ones they’d discarded earlier when they fled. Only one of them still worked. There was a small clang and they looked up to see Tallulah descending the ladder, wrapped in a fur coat.   
  
“No, no, no, no, no way. You’re not coming.” the Doctor said.   
  
Tallulah paused. “Tell me what’s going on.” She demanded without her usual accent.  
  
“There’s nothing you can do. Go back.”  
  
She started back down the ladder. “Look, whoever’s taken Martha, they could’ve taken Lazlo, couldn’t they?”  
  
“Tallulah, you’re not safe down here.”  
  
“Then that’s my problem!” she ground out. “Come on. Which way?” With an icy glare, she walked past him and down the tunnel Rose was standing by.  
  
He met Rose’s gaze for a moment and she nodded. He gritted his teeth and started in the right direction. “This way,” he sighed.   
  
Tallulah trailed behind them, whimpering every few seconds, stepping around the water when she could. Her heels clicked against the stone floor, magnified in the enclosed space, and grated against Rose’s nerves. She and the Doctor knew how to move quickly and quietly and how to complain internally–the showgirl knew neither, it seemed. More than once they had to hiss at her to be quiet or flat out shush her and that was before even started talking.   
  
“When you say ‘they’ve taken her’, who’s ‘they,’ exactly? …And who are you, anyway? I never asked.”   
  
“Shh,” the Doctor whispered as his sensitive ears registered noise coming from up the tunnel.  
  
“Okay, okay,” she rolled her eyes.  
  
“Shh, shh, shh, shh, shh!” He held up his hand for her to be quiet and stared ahead.  
  
A horrifyingly familiar shadow slid along the wall and Rose’s heart stopped.   
  
“I mean you’re a handsome enough–”  
  
The Doctor jumped back, throwing his hand over Tallulah’s mouth and grabbing Rose with the other. He dragged them away from the split, back around the corner, and into an alcove. Rose found herself sandwiched between the cold wall and the expanse of the Doctor’s back. He heart galloped in her chest and she had to press her face into the Doctor’s shoulder to muffle the sound of her breathing as the metallic rolling got closer. She watched over the fabric of his suit as a Dalek glided past their hiding place. If it turned its eyestalk just a bit to the left then it would see them.  
  
 _Don’t turn, don’t turn, oh God, don’t turn._  
  
The TARDIS pulsed angrily in her mind, her song dark and dangerous.   
  
The Dalek rolled past without noticing them and Tallulah wrenched the Doctor’s hand away from her mouth. When he took a step forward, Rose held onto his suit, completely terrified. They should be gone–locked in hell with the rest of their kind.  
  
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” the Doctor murmured, stepping out of the alcove to watch it go, Rose peering around him. “They survive. They always survive.”  
  
Rose emerged from behind his back and slid her hand into his. His fingers curled around hers, squeezing tightly, and he looked down at her. She looked back, her eyes sad and terrified…and yellow and ancient. His beloved ship, so afraid for them that she was revealing her presence in Rose’s mind through her eyes. It’d been weeks since it’d happened.  **Months.**  Not since Shakespeare. And in that moment, he hated the Daleks a little bit more. He hadn’t even known that was possible.   
  
“That metal thing? What was it?” Tallulah, for her part, figured there was something bad about that metal thingy that had rolled by based on their reactions alone. But she wasn’t expecting the answer she got.  
  
“A Dalek,” Rose said darkly without turning. Tallulah didn’t need to get the wrong idea about her. She guessed from the Doctor’s expression that her eyes were doing that weird gold thing again. Didn’t surprise her, really, with all the emotions running through her and the way the TARDIS had sounded in her head.   
  
“And it’s not just metal,” the Doctor added in a growl. “It’s alive.”  
  
Tallulah laughed, “You’re kiddin’ me.”   
  
“Do I look like I’m kidding?” he snapped and her smile faded. “Inside that shell, there’s a creature, born to hate, whose only thought is to destroy everything and everyone that isn’t a Dalek, too.”  
  
Tallulah glanced at him like he was nuts.  
  
“And it won’t stop until it’s killed every human being alive.” he added quietly.  
  
“But if that’s not a human being, that kind of implies it’s from outer space.” She smiled nervously, hoping they’d contradict her. He just looked at her. “Yet again, that’s a no with the kiddin’. Oy… Well, what’s it doing here in New York?”  
  
The Doctor said nothing and simply glared in the direction the Dalek had gone.  
  
“Well?” She was standing right beside them now.  
  
“Same thing they’re always doin’: trying to kill everyone.” Rose looked at her and when Tallulah gasped she remembered why she hadn’t wanted to do that.  
  
“What’s wrong with your–”  
  
“There’s nothing wrong with them.” she said quickly.  
  
“A-a-are you…are you from outer space too?”  
  
“No, I’m human.”   
  
Without warning, the Doctor seized their arms and started hauling them back the way they came. He was angry and afraid, she could feel it in his grip, and she wasn’t the least bit surprised. There was a  _Dalek_  here and she prayed there was only one.   
  
One was bad enough on its own.  _“You could hide an army down here,”_ Frank had said. Hopefully there wasn’t. Well, there was an army of pigs, but they would be easier to deal with than an army of Daleks. Nothing short of the Bad Wolf could deal with that, especially in this day and age.   
  
“Leggo of me!” Tallulah yelped. “Get your mitts off!”  
  
“Every second you’re down here, you’re in danger. I’m taking you back, right now.”  
  
“You are not gonna–” Rose said before he could even finish his sentence, but she was interrupted by Tallulah’s startled shriek. She screamed once, too, as they found themselves face-to-face with a pigman.   
  
It skidded to a stop when it saw them, looking around wildly for an escape, then scrambled back and ducked into the shadow of an alcove.  
  
“Where’s Martha?!” the Doctor demanded harshly, approaching it. “What have you done with her?” He stood on the other side of the pigman, cutting off the other escape route, and shined his torch at it. “What have you done with Martha?”  
  
“I didn’t take her,” the pig man said in perfect English.  
  
The Doctor’s eyes narrowed in surprise. “You remember your name?”   
  
“Don’t…look at me.”  
  
“Do you know where she is?” Tallulah lowered her hands from her mouth and walked towards them.  
  
“Stay back!” the pigman held out his hand but didn’t turn. “Don’t look at me.”  
  
“What happened to you?” the Doctor asked.  
  
“They made me a monster.”  
  
“Who did?”  
  
“The masters.”  
  
“The Daleks,” he corrected. “Why?”  
  
“They needed slaves,” he explained. “They needed slaves to steal more people, so they created us–part animal, part human.”  
  
While he spoke, Rose closed the distance between herself and the Doctor. The pig man glanced at her for a second, eyes widening with horror, and when he saw her face properly in the light, he relaxed and continued on.  
  
“I escaped before they got my mind, but it was still too late.”  
  
“You were there,” Rose said. “In the theater.”  
  
“So were you.”  
  
“We saw you.”  
  
“You chased me.”  
  
She took a step forward, her expression icy. “You led us into the room, disappeared, and then one of your mates got her.”  
  
“You shouldn’t have been there. I’m sorry, I really am. She’s probably with the other people taken tonight.”  
  
“Hang on a minute,” Tallulah interrupted. “You were in the theater?”  
  
“I never–” he started to say then closed his eyes. “Yes.”  
  
“Why? Why were you there?”   
  
“I never wanted you to see me like this.”  
  
“Why me? What do I got to do with this?” Arms wrapped around her chest, she took a few steps closer. “Were you following me? Is that why you were there?”  
  
The pig man turned around, but not before Rose saw the mournful expression on his face, and sighed. “Yes.”  
  
No, no. It couldn’t be. It  _couldn’t_  be. But it made sense and Rose hoped she was wrong, because it was too cruel. But Daleks were cruel and their very existence made life darker. The people in Henry van Statten’s bunker, the people on the Gamestation and 200,100 Earth, Canary Wharf, the Time Lords, everyone in the Time War. And now the people being turned into slaves  
  
Tallulah stared at him, open-mouthed. “Who are you?”  
  
“I was lonely.”  
  
“Who are you?” she asked, voice breaking.  
  
“I needed to see you.”  
  
“Who are you?”   
  
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.   
  
He turned to go but she reached out and grabbed his arm, turning him around. “No, wait. …Let me look at you.” She moved him back into the light trickling down from somewhere above. He sighed as her eyes searched his face.   
  
“Laszlo?” He gave her the barest of nods. “My Laszlo?” Her lower lip trembled and she touched his face. “Oh, what have they done to you?” She straightened the collar of his coveralls and smoothed down the front before resting her hands on his shoulders.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he repeated softly. “I’m so sorry.”  
  
The Doctor had been standing back to give them space, but now he had to interrupt them. The more they stood here the greater the chance that Martha would be turned into a pig herself. “Laszlo, can you show me where they are?”   
  
Laszlo turned. Of course he could. “But they’ll kill you.”  
  
“If I don’t stop them, they’ll kill everyone.”  
  
He exhaled softly and nodded in agreement. He looked at Tallulah and she nodded with an encouraging smile. “Then follow me,” he told the Doctor.   
  
Rose and the Doctor glanced at each other then followed the half-pig man down the tunnels. He told them they had about a mile to go until they reached the laboratory where the Daleks were based, but to keep quiet because the slaves were always patrolling the tunnels with orders to capture anyone they found. Rose wished, not for the first time, that the Doctor carried some sort of weapon besides his sonic screwdriver. At least something they could bash a pigman over the head with if one came along.  
  
When they heard voices and pig snorts coming from up ahead they slowed and crept along the last few lengths of the tunnels. They hadn’t gone anything close to a mile yet. They peeked around the corner and saw a group of pigmen standing guard over a cluster of humans. Rose sighed in relief when she heard Martha’s voice over the squealing, followed by Frank’s.  
  
“What are they doing? What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”   
  
“SILENCE. SILENCE.”   
  
Rose literally jumped half a foot in the air at the harsh, grating voice straight from her nightmares. Laszlo ducked back around the corner and Rose gripped the Doctor’s hand so tightly that she wouldn’t have been surprised if it ended up breaking.   
  
“YOU WILL FORM A LINE. MOVE! MOVE!”   
  
The pigs squealed and grunted, shoving the poor humans against the wall. Some of them struggled, of course, because they were human and humans had always been a stubborn lot.  
  
“Just do what it says everyone!” That was Martha. “Just…obey!”  
  
“THE FEMALE IS WISE. OBEY.”  
  
“REPORT,” another Dalek rolled around the corner.  
  
“THESE ARE STRONG SPECIMENS. THEY WILL HELP THE DALEK CAUSE. WHAT IS THE STATUS OF THE FINAL EXPERIMENT?”  
  
“THE DALEKANIUM IS IN PLACE. THE ENERGY CONDUCTOR IS NOW COMPLETE.”  
  
“THEN I WILL EXTRACT PRISONERS FOR SELECTION.”  
  
A pig grabbed a black man in a cap and pulled him forward as the Dalek stated, “INTELLEGENCE SCAN. INITIATE”  
  
Rose gasped and slapped her hand over her mouth when she saw the Dalek raise the suction on the end of its arm towards the man’s face, recalling what had happened the last time she’d seen that happen. Thankfully her noise had gone unnoticed by everyone down the tunnel.   
  
“READING BRAINWAVES. …LOW INTELLEGENCE.”  
  
“You calling me stupid?” the man asked crossly.   
  
“SILENCE! THIS ONE WILL BECOME A PIG SLAVE. NEXT!”  
  
“No, let go of me!” the man shouted as two pigs hauled him away. “I’m not becoming one of them! NO! LET ME GO!”  
  
Laszlo looked at them, his still-human eyes sad. “They’re divided into two groups,” he explained–high intelligence and low intelligence. The low intelligence are taken to become pig slaves like me.”  
  
“Well, that’s not fair,” Tallulah protested. Dear God, did that woman not know how to whisper?  
  
The Doctor shushed her.   
  
She glanced at him then whispered, “You’re the smartest guy I ever dated.”  
  
“And the others?” he asked.  
  
“They’re taken to the laboratory.” Laszlo said.  
  
“But why? Why for?”  
  
“I don’t know. The masters only call it ‘The Final…Experiment.’”   
  
Frank was deemed intelligent and Martha was as well, mere seconds after the scan started.   
  
“THIS ONE WILL BECOME PART OF THE FINAL EXPERIMENT.”  
  
“You can’t just experiment on people!” Martha shouted at it. “IT’S INSANE!”  
  
Ignoring her, the Dalek rotated and addressed the remaining pig slaves. “PRISONERS OF HIGH INTELLIGENCE WILL BE TAKEN TO THE TRANSGENIC LABORATORY.”  
  
“Look out. They’re moving,” the Doctor hissed, pulling Rose back.  
  
Tallulah and Laszlo were going to make a run for it. “Doctor! Doctor, Rose, quickly!”  
  
“I’m not coming,” the Doctor whispered. “I’ve got an idea. You go!”   
  
Laszlo sent Tallulah on her way and, though she protested, she did flee on her own and Laszlo rejoined them. Once again Rose found herself pressed between a wall and the Doctor’s back as the Daleks rolled past. There was a terrifying moment when she thought the Daleks may turn and head down their tunnel, but luck was on their side this time and they went down the opposite one. The Doctor waited until Martha passed in front of them then he slipped into the line. Rose moved in behind him, just in front of Frank who squeezed her shoulder in greeting.   
  
“Don’t turn around,” the Doctor murmured to Martha. “Just keep walking.”  
  
She gasped softly. “Oh! I am so glad to see you.”   
  
“Yeah, well, you can kiss me later. You, too, Frank, if you want.”  
  
Frank sniggered.   
  
Rose poked the Doctor’s back and he managed to smile over his shoulder at her.   
  
“Is Rose with you?” Martha asked.  
  
“Yeah, she’s right behind me. We found Laszlo, too.”  
  
“You did?”  
  
“Mmm, and he escaped halfway to becoming a pig, so don’t stare.”  
  
“Doctor, those metal things…are they–”  
  
“Yes,” he said flatly.   
  
“They’re the ones who–”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Martha took a shuddering breath and her blood ran like ice water through her veins. She knew he and Rose had managed to stop the Daleks the last three times they’d faced them–even if only just barely–but would their luck continue? One Dalek alone could kill hundreds before being vanquished and who knew how many were hiding under New York. At least two, and they were enough to bring the city to its knees, for sure.   
  
The half-mile trek to the Dalek’s base was long, but over far too quickly. Part of all of them wished they would simply roam the tunnels forever and never reach their destination, but a part of them wanted to see where they’d end up.   
  
The first indication that they were nearing the laboratory was when the wet bricks became dry, and then turned into smooth stone, and when they passed through a door, they became the walls of a building. Slowly they began to hear the rumbling of machinery, the hum of electricity, the crackling of flames, and a bizarre hissing noise. One of the Daleks paused and ordered them to keep moving. The Doctor ducked his head when they passed the Dalek and Rose stared at the floor. It either didn’t notice them or didn’t care. It probably had never seen either of them before and wouldn’t have recognized them as a threat anyway.  
  
The Dalek’s base was a great room supported by columns that extended upward into the dark, further than Rose could see. Lamps and electric lights on each column illuminated the lower area. The tables and counters were littered with beakers and test tubes, some filled with mixtures, others empty; and there were stacks of machines here and there, all of them equipped with controls operable only by Daleks. The whole place was cold and reeked of pigmen, death and illness, burning flesh, and a peculiar odor that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.  
  
A single Dalek stood near the far wall, shaking with smoke issuing from its black casing. There were four Daleks in total, including the black one, and she knew without a doubt who they were: the Cult of Skaro. They’d somehow escaped the pull of the Void and wound up in 1930. All of the others had been sucked in, except for the ones who’d caused the whole mess in the first place. She clenched her teeth against a scream of rage.   
  
“It’s the Cult of Skaro,” she hissed through her teeth. The Doctor nodded once.   
  
“REPORT!” One of the brass-colored Daleks shouted at its two comrades that were watching the smoking black one.  
  
One of them turned. “DALEK SEC IS ENTERING THE FINAL STAGE OF EVOLUTION.”  
  
“SCAN HIM. PREPARE FOR BIRTH!”  
  
“‘Evolution?’” the Doctor muttered.  
  
“What’s wrong with old Charlie boy over there?” Martha asked.  
  
“Ask them.”   
  
Martha gasped. “What, me? Don’t be daft. You do it, Rose. You’ve done it before.”  
  
“Exactly,” Rose murmured, “they know who I am. If they see me or the Doctor they’ll kill us. It’s got to be you.”  
  
“Now ask them what’s going on,” the Doctor commanded quietly.   
  
Martha took a deep breath and stepped away from the group. She took a deep breath and, shaking like a leaf the entire time, called out, “Daleks!” The three Daleks spun around almost immediately. “I demand to be told–what is this…Final Experiment?”  
  
Laszlo and Frank moved to conceal the Doctor and Rose as one of the Daleks rolled towards her.   
  
The Dalek considered her for a second and she exhaled loudly. “Report!”  
  
“YOU WILL BEAR WITNESS.”  
  
“To what?”  
  
“THIS IS THE DAWN OF A NEW AGE.”  
  
“What does that mean?”   
  
“WE ARE THE ONLY FOUR DALEKS IN EXISTENCE, SO THE SPECIES MUST EVOLVE. A LIFE OUTSIDE THE SHELL–THE CHILDREN OF SKARO MUST WALK AGAIN.”  
  
With that, the Dalek backed away and spun back around. The other two Daleks backed away from Dalek Sec. The black metal monster slowly stopped shaking and the blue light behind his eyestalk died. The casing his as it parted, revealing a crouched humanoid figure below the place where there’d once been a shapeless genetically engineered mass. But unlike the one she’d seen so long ago, this one hadn’t been altered by Rose’s DNA to question itself.   
  
The humanoid slowly pulled itself from the casing. It had ugly brown, blotched skin, clawed hands, and a head with six tentacles on either side with bands of skin holding in a large pink brain. A single green eye, like that of a Cyclops, opened and closed as its neural receptors adjusted to the light. The most horrifying part, however, were the black suit and spats it was wearing. That wasn’t something a Dalek would choose to be born in. They must’ve used someone’s body.  
  
“What is it?” Martha gasped.   
  
The creature slowly straightened up, its hands uncurling as it looked at the ceiling. Rose gasped, her mouth working in soundless horror, and she took a step back. The Daleks moved away from it as well.  
  
The creature lowered its head and looked directly at them. “I…am…a human Dalek. I…am your future!”

 

 


	21. The Battle for Hooverville

“These humans will become like me.”  
  
If Rose had to pick the way she wanted to die, death by Dalek was not the way she would’ve chosen. Especially not death so her body could be one half of a Dalek hybrid. That ranked somewhere between death by Ood and being Upgraded. If she could choose the manner of her departure, she would definitely want to die burning from having the Vortex running through her head, because if that ever happened again it would probably mean she was saving her Doctor and the rest of the universe.   
  
Yeah, that’d be the way to go.  
  
“Prepare them for hybridization,” Dalek Sec ordered in the hoarse, accented voice he’d stolen.  
  
When the pigs closed in on them, Rose realized that the Doctor had left her side. Which meant he was coming up with some way to save them because he wouldn’t just leave them like this. So if it meant giving him a few more seconds to do whatever he was trying to do, then she would reveal herself. She ducked under the arm of the pig reaching for her and whistled loudly to get their attention.  
  
“Oi! You lot!” she shouted. “Remember me?”  
  
The Daleks turned their eyestalks towards her and the only question was which one of them would recognize her first.  
  
“YOU! YOU WERE THERE WITH THE CYBERMEN,” the one on the right screamed.   
  
“Glad you remember me.” She stuffed her hands in the pockets of her jacket. Behind her, the pigmen stopped trying to move the humans. “How’s it been?”  
  
“YOU ARE AN ASSOCIATE OF THE DOCTOR.”  
  
“An associate? Is that what I am?”  
  
“You murdered the Emperor,” Dalek Sec accused.  
  
“Your powers of perception amaze.”  _Any time now would be great, Doctor._  
  
“YOU ARE AN ENEMY OF THE DALEKS!”  
  
A vintage song started playing somewhere and Rose smirked. That would be the Doctor, then. No one else would make that kind of entrance.   
  
“What is that sound?” Sec demanded.   
  
The Doctor peeked out from behind one of the machines with a radio in his hand. “Ah, well, now, that would be me.” He shut it off, setting it on the table, and walked casually towards Dalek Sec. “Hello. Surprise! Boo! Et cetera.”  
  
“Doctor.”  
  
“THE ENEMY OF THE DALEKS!”   
  
“EXTERMINATE!”  
  
“Wait!” Dalek Sec threw out his arms and the Daleks looked at him in disbelief, but obeyed.  
  
Rose wished she could see the Doctor’s face so she would know how he was taking this. She herself was surprised that the hybrid had stopped his pure comrades from killing the Doctor. That might have just very well been a good sign. Maybe.   
  
A girl could hope.  
  
“Well, then, a new form of Dalek.” The Doctor strolled forward with his hands in his pockets. Dalek Sec’s tentacles twitched erratically as he approached. “Fascinating. And very clever.”   
  
“The Cult of Skaro escaped your slaughter,” Dalek Sec growled.   
  
“How did you end up in 1930?”  
  
“Emergency Temporal Shift.”  
  
“Oh, oh!” The Doctor laughed. “That must’ve roasted up your power cells, yeah?” He turned around, tugging on his earlobe, and slowly walked back towards the would-be test subjects. He caught Rose’s eye for a moment and she could tell he wanted her to move. She took one step backwards, then another.   
  
Laszlo, as if reading the Doctor’s mind, pulled her back and Frank shifted so she was mostly hidden behind him. With Rose safe (as safe as she cold be in a room full of Daleks, anyway), he continued on talking. “Time was, four Daleks could’ve conquered the world. But instead you’re skulking away, hidden in the dark, experimenting.” He looked Sec up and down. “All of which results…in you.”  
  
Dalek Sec took a step forward. “I am Dalek in human form!”   
  
“But what does it feel like?” he asked quietly. “You can talk to me, Dalek Sec–it is ‘Dalek Sec,’ isn’t it? That’s your name. You’ve got a name and a mind of your own–tell me what you’re thinking right now.”   
  
Dalek Sec’s eye narrowed. “I…feel…humanity.” He turned away, as if ashamed by this realization.  
  
“Good. That’s good.”  
  
“I…feel…everything we wanted from mankind, which is…ambition…hatred…aggression…and war! Such…a genius for war!”  
  
“No.” The Doctor shook his head. “That’s not what humanity means.”  
  
“I think it does! Your female murdered the Emperor. She feels…pride in it. The way a Dalek would feel pride in destroying an enemy.” Dalek Sec actually smiled then at the cold fury that had entered the Doctor’s eyes. “At heart, this species is so very…Dalek.”   
  
Frank felt Rose flinch at the monster’s words and he resisted the urge to look at her since he was supposed to be hiding her. Personally he wanted to thump her on the back and tell her job well done. Though she didn’t much like being compared to one of those things. Neither did he, actually. He didn’t go ‘round turning people into pigs.  
  
“Alright!” the Doctor turned again and moved closer to the people. The Daleks automatically got out of his way. “So what have you achieved, then, with this Final Experiment, eh? Nothing! Because I can show you what you’re missing.” He pointed at the radio. “With this thing–simple little radio.” He patted it.  
  
“WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THAT DEVICE?” one of the Daleks demanded.   
  
“Well, exactly–it plays music. What’s the point of that? Oh, with music, you can dance to it, sing with it–” he looked into the eyestalk of the nearest Dalek “–fall in love to it.   
  
“Unless you’re a Dalek of course. Then it’s all just noise.” He wrenched his hand from out of his pocket and pointed his sonic screwdriver at the radio. A high-pitched tone blared out from the speakers. Dalek Sec yelped, doubling over, and holding his head. The other Daleks rolled away.   
  
It seemed to affect the pigmen too. All of them, even Laszlo, released their hostages and held their ears.  
  
“RUN!” the Doctor bellowed.  
  
“PROTECT THE HYBRID!”  
  
“PROTECT! PROTECT!”  
  
The humans fled through the tunnels with Rose at the lead. She had no idea where she was going but anywhere was better than that base. The farther away they got from the Daleks and their newest monstrosity the better. Probably the newest in a long line of experiments since they’d first arrived. That thing the Doctor had found earlier in the sewer–now that she knew what they were dealing with, she thought that it did look remarkably like a Dalek’s true form. She’d seen one once, years ago.   
  
So what had that thing been, then? A baby Dalek left to rot?  
  
Rose slowed, searching wildly for a ladder. They needed to get up top.  
  
“Come on!” the Doctor thundered as he overtook them. He grabbed her by the hand and pulled her along. “Move, move, move, move, move!”   
  
Ahead they spotted Tallulah standing at a juncture, wide-eyed and lost. If they hadn’t come this way she might’ve very well been captured. “And you, Tallulah, run!”  
  
Rose gave her a push as she ran past, urging her to  _move_. “What’s happened to Laszlo?!” she wailed when she saw he wasn’t among them.  
  
“He had to stay behind!” Rose shouted. “He’ll be fine!”  
  
“But he–” she protested as she was pulled along by one of the men.  
  
“MOVE!” the Doctor called over his shoulder.   
  
The Doctor led them through the twists and turns with ease, and no one would’ve been surprised if he’d managed to map out the entire sewer system already. They ran flat-out for the entire way. One of them men tried to stop for breath, but Martha grabbed him firmly by the arm and hauled him on. When they reached the ladder underneath the revue, the Doctor urged them all up quickly and only ascended himself when they were all safely aboveground. Then with the help of two of the men, he pushed the manhole back into place and ran the sonic along the circumference, sealing it shut.   
  
“There, they’ll have a hard time following us,” he said and straightened up. “At least this way.”  
  
“What…were those things?” one of the other men demanded.  
  
“They’re called Daleks,” the Doctor told him flatly. “Imagine the most horrible monster you’ve ever heard of, multiply that by about a thousand and you’ve got a Dalek. If any of you aren’t from Hooverville, you go home as fast as you can. Stick to the main roads, keep out of the shadows, and don’t be alone. But don’t go to the police, you’ll only get them killed.”  
  
“How do you know so much about them?”  
  
The Doctor fixed the man with a look so full anger and sadness that the man automatically stepped away from him. “Just run.”  
  
One of the men did end up going his own way, but the rest followed the Doctor back to Hooverville to warn everyone. Tallulah came too, she had nowhere else to go that would feel safe and she wasn’t going to wait around backstage for more pigmen to come up. Plus, sticking with them was her best chance of finding Laszlo again.   
  
As soon as they were out of the revue, Rose slipped her hand into the Doctor’s and rested her head against his shoulder. “That was reckless, what you did back there,” he murmured. “They would’ve killed you.”  
  
“I’d rather die human than live as a Dalek.”   
  
The Doctor’s eyes widened. She had just unknowingly echoed his statement from the Gamestation. The choice he’d had to make for every living creature when he constructed the Delta wave. But she’d been gone, long gone by the time he’d said those words to Jack.   
  
He squeezed her hand tighter. “I’d prefer if you did neither, to be perfectly honest.”  
  
Rose smiled.   
  
The walk back to Hooverville was filled with mostly silence and furtive looks around, over shoulders, expecting pigmen or Daleks to appear at any moment. They tried to keep on the busiest streets, the ones illuminated by lampposts and the most moonlight. The Doctor kept Martha close to him and Rose even closer. When they entered the park, one of the residents of Hooverville took point, guiding them through lit trails towards the shantytown. When they got near enough, a sentry emerged from the shadows and found himself staring cross-eyed at the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver.  
  
“Easy, there!” the man said. “I ain’t gonna hurt ya! …Marco? Elroy? Frank! You’re alive! Solomon said you got taken.”  
  
“I did,” Frank confirmed. “But we got away. Where’s Solomon?”  
  
“Follow me.” He picked up a shotgun from the ground and led them the last few yards of the trail, on into Hooverville.   
  
The entire place seemed to be on mauve alert. People were awake and stationed throughout the community, armed with guns, torches, and sticks. Like any of that would do any good against a Dalek but they were human and if there was one thing you could count on humans to do, it was to defend their own with whatever they had, even if the situation seemed hopeless. The sentry led them straight to Solomon who embraced Frank with the air of a father greeting his lost son, then sent the sentry back out to his post.   
  
“Sit down, get warm,” he told the women, gesturing to the fire. “And you, Doctor, can tell me what exactly happened down there.”  
  
He did, recounting everything from identifying the DNA type as being from the planet Skaro, to finding Laszlo, to what the Daleks were, to escaping back here. Solomon listened the whole time, asking only a few questions, with a gun clenched firmly in his hand. Rose, Tallulah, and Martha sat by the fire to keep warm. Tallulah had her feet propped up near the flames and Rose rested her head on Martha’s shoulder.   
  
“These…Daleks. They sound like the stuff out of nightmares,” Solomon said when the Doctor was done. “And they want to breed?”  
  
 _And that’s one mental image I did not need_. Rose scowled.  
  
“They’re splicing themselves onto human bodies. And if I’m right, they’ve got a farm of breeding stock right here in Hooverville.” The Doctor looked around at the denizens. “You’ve got to get everyone out.”  
  
“Hooverville’s the lowest place a man can fall. There’s nowhere else to go.”   
  
“I’m sorry, Solomon. You’ve got to scatter,” the Doctor told him urgently. “Go, anywhere–get onto the railroads, travel across state, just get out of New York!”  
  
“There’s got to be a way to reason with these things.”   
  
Rose laughed scornfully and Martha scoffed. “Not a chance.”  
  
“You ain’t seen ‘em, boss,” Frank agreed, rising to his feet.  
  
“Neither have you, not really,” Rose pointed out. “You haven’t seen what they do. Have done.”  
  
“Daleks are bad enough at any time, but right now, they’re vulnerable,” the Doctor said. “That makes them more dangerous than ever.”  
  
“You’ve  _got_  to listen to us, Solomon. I showed a Dalek pity once, a long time ago, and I got over two hundred people killed. Do you want that?”   
  
Solomon looked down at her with a thousand questions written across his face, wanting to know who she really was, who  _they_  were, how they knew so much, and what sort of life did they live? Who were they, the man and women who crouched around a shapeless thing in the sewers as if it wasn’t unordinary, who spoke of other planets and aliens as if they were undeniable facts? Who was she, the young girl with wisdom beyond her years and eyes that occasionally seemed to reflect time itself?  
  
He opened his mouth to say something to her but he never got the chance to speak because the night air was suddenly pierced by the shrill blast of a whistle, again and again, and a young man’s voice raised in alarm. People looked around wildly. Rose jumped to her feet.   
  
“Sentry,” Solomon said, shifting the gun in his arms. “Must have seen something.”  
  
Around them other whistles began to blare as other sentries spotted things approaching. The black man who’d had his bread stolen earlier ran through the shacks and tents, hollering for his life. “They’re here! They’re here! I’ve seen them! Monsters! They’re monsters!”   
  
Whistles blared, voices cried out, and people emerged from their homes, grabbed weapons and ran towards the fires, while others ducked inside for safety.   
  
The Doctor’s expression was grim. “It’s starting.”   
  
“WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!” Solomon bellowed. “EVERYONE TO ARMS!”   
  
“Yeah, I’m ready boss! But all of you find a weapon! Use anything!” Frank shouted.   
  
Men passed out guns. Pistols were procured from tents. Knives and switchblades were pulled from pockets and shoes. Tallulah and Martha grabbed sticks. Rose grabbed a poker from near a cauldron. Some people didn’t even consider fighting and simply ran screaming for their lives.  
  
“Come back!” Solomon called. “We’ve got to stick together! It’s not safe out there! COME BACK!”  
  
Between bodies moving every which way, the shouts of humans, and the squeals of the pigmen, it was complete and utter chaos. Calls of help went go up as the pigs began taking people. It was all Rose could do to make it back over to the Doctor’s side, poker in one hand, and he latched onto her other hand.   
  
The Doctor was strong, even if he didn’t look it, superior Time Lord physiology and all that, plus he had the sonic. Rose could do plenty of damage with a poker. With that thick stick, she knew Martha would be able to brain any pig that tried to grab her, but Tallulah probably wouldn’t even land a shot, or run fast enough in those heels. Okay, so her they would definitely have to worry about. What about the others? All these people with guns, they were more likely to kill each other than the pigs if things got too hectic, and it was way too cramped here.  
  
The same thought seemed to occur to Martha. She grabbed the Doctor’s arm. “We’ve got to get out of the park.”   
  
“We can’t, they’re on all sides,” the Doctor said through his teeth. “They’re driving everyone back towards us.”  
  
“We’re trapped!” Tallulah cried, close to tears.  
  
Solomon cocked his gun. “Then we stand together! Gather around! EVERYBODY, COME TO ME! You there, Jethro, Harry, Seamus, stay together! They can’t take all of us!”  
  
Everyone left that wasn’t hiding was pressed into a tight group in the middle of the camp with the pigmen closing in on all sides. With a self-righteous yell, someone fired at a pigman. His aim was true and the mutant fell with a final squeal. The others started firing. Pigs fell, squealing their last, but where one fell another took its place. They just kept coming.   
  
“If we can just hold them off till daylight,” Martha reasoned. “Then other people will be in the park, like police; they can help.”  
  
The Doctor wasn’t looking at her. He was looking over their heads at something in the sky. “Oh, Martha, they’re just the foot soldiers.”  
  
Rose followed his gaze and gasped. A single Dalek approached them from above, flying down from the sky like the demon of space it was. People heard the humming, or perhaps saw it in their peripheral vision, and they looked up in horror at their approaching doom.   
  
“Oh my God!” Martha’s voice shook.  
  
The Dalek hovered just a few yards above their heads and looked down at them through its blue-lit eyestalk.   
  
“What in this world?” Solomon exclaimed.  
  
“It’s the devil! A devil in the sky! God save us all! It’s damnation!”  
  
“Oh yeah? We’ll see about that.” Frank aimed his gun and fired straight at the Dalek. The bullet hit home but rebounded off the Dalek’s armor harmlessly.  
  
Letting go of Rose’s hand, the Doctor lunged forward. “That’s not gonna work!” he grated and pushed Frank’s gun down before the Dalek could figure out who’d fired.  
  
Another Dalek appeared in the sky and drifted down towards the first. Martha felt the need to quietly point it out in case they hadn’t noticed. The Daleks were still for a moment, then the one on the right fired and they dived down. They circled back around, each flying the opposite way, firing shot after shot at the people below. Everywhere they hit blew up, again and again, and people screamed as they tried to run, only to be blasted away. The people in the center ducked or just dropped to the ground, hoping to avoid getting hit, Rose included, and she felt Martha grip her arm so tightly that she knew she would have a bruise.   
  
The TARDIS screamed, her song thundering in Rose’s ears, and her anger and rage rising up from the place they were linked, melding with Rose’s own emotions, coursing through her veins like fire. If the TARDIS weren’t so far away, she would run straight in and look into her Heart. In theory she could probably summon the TARDIS to her with the huon energy they shared, but she wasn’t sure to do it on her own and definitely not with so little time.  
  
Though she had to wonder why they hadn’t actually killed anyone. She knew Daleks had remarkable aim; a fleeing human was no harder to hit than the broad side of a barn. Yet they simply blew things up, sent people flying. Only scaring them, not killing.  
  
“LEAVE THEM ALONE!” the Doctor roared. “THE’VE DONE NOTHING TO YOU!”  
  
The one above them lowered its eyestalk to the Doctor and all at once, the Daleks halted their assault.   
  
 _Of course,_ Rose realized.  _They were trying to draw him out._  
  
People slowly rose and straightened up, sensing the reprieve. Around them were the cries of the wounded, and the terrified whimpering of the unharmed. Adjusting his grip on the gun, Solomon started forward with his eyes on the demon in the sky.  
  
“No!” The Doctor grabbed him by the arm. “Solomon, stay back!”  
  
Solomon ignored him. “I’m told that…I’m addressing the Daleks, is that right?”  
  
The other Dalek joined the first one, floating over their heads. They looked down at him but didn’t respond. Perhaps they were intrigued or perhaps they just were waiting for an opportune moment to strike him down. Maybe they had yet to actually attack anyone directly was because they wanted the first kill to be that of the leader.   
  
“From what I hear, you’re outcasts, too.”  
  
“Solomon, don’t!”  
  
“Doctor, this is my township. You will respect my authority. Just let me try,” he added more quietly, pushing the Doctor away. The Time Lord shook his head as he backed away, knowing what was going to happen and praying that it didn’t.  
  
Solomon took a few steps forward, spreading out his arms in surrender–or welcome? “Daleks…ain’t we the same? Underneath, ain’t we all kin?” He lowered his gun to the ground and straightened up.  
  
“Because, you see, I’ve just discovered this past day God’s universe is a thousand times the size I thought it was. And that scares me. Oh, yeah, terrifies me. Right down to the bone.” The Daleks honestly seemed to be listening to him, though the chances they were suddenly having an epiphany were slim to none.   
  
“But surely, it’s got to give me hope. Hope that, maybe together, we can make a better tomorrow. So I beg you now–if you have any compassion in your hearts, then you’ll meet with us and stop this fight.”  
  
The Daleks looked at each other and everyone else looked at the Daleks, and all of them waiting.   
  
“Well? What do you say?”  
  
“EXTERMINATE!” was the reply and the Dalek fired at Solomon.   
  
For a moment his body was illuminated in the greenish-blue light and they saw his entire skeleton. He cried out in agony and fell to his knees and even though she’d known it was coming, Rose screamed right along with everyone else as Solomon collapsed to the ground.  
  
“NO! Solomon!” Frank cried, rushing towards the elder’s body.   
  
Next thing she knew, the Doctor was standing in front of Solomon’s body with his arms spread wide and screaming at the Daleks. “Enough! If it’ll stop you attacking them, then take me instead!”   
  
Rose and Martha gasped and the crowd behind them fell silent.  
  
“I WILL BE THE DESTROYER OF OUR GREATEST ENEMY!” If Daleks could feel excitement, that one would probably be doing backflips.   
  
“NO!” Rose screamed and before Martha or anyone could reach out to stop her, she threw herself in front of the Doctor, her arms wide, and wishing she was taller so her body could shield his the way he could shield her. Her entire body felt hot and her eyes glowed. It was like someone had flipped a switch in her mind and she  _knew_ what to do and how to do it. Because it was the Daleks and the Bad Wolf only existed in the first place to protect her Doctor from them.  
  
“Rose, what are you–” The Doctor seized her arms to push her out of the way–  
  
“EXTERMINATE!”  
  
–and she was just a microsecond second from pulling the TARDIS to her when the Dalek spoke again.  
  
“I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. IT IS THE DOCTOR!”  
  
The Dalek paused, listening to something none of them could hear. The Doctor’s grip did not loosen, but he had stopped trying to move her.   
  
“AND THE FEMALE? …BUT SHE DESTROYED THE EMPEROR.”  
  
Upon hearing those words, the Doctor shoved Rose behind him firmly.   
  
“THE URGE TO KILL IS TOO STRONG.”  
  
She struggled against his hold on her. His arm was twisted behind him at an awkward angle and she probably would’ve gotten free, but the Dalek spoke again.  
  
“I…OBEY.”  
  
“What’s going on?!” the Doctor demanded.  
  
“…THE DOCTOR WILL FOLLOW!”  
  
“NO!” Rose shouted again, grabbing onto his coat. More quietly, “You can’t go. You  _can’t_.”  
  
He turned around, adjusting his grip so he was holding her forearms. He looked into her eyes–he hadn’t seen them this bright this since he’d turned on the particles in the lab. The energy within her was awake and he sensed the power of Time teeming beneath the surface. Whatever link remained to the Bad Wolf was alive and he had the horrible suspicion that if things didn’t calm down immediately, the Daleks would soon be evaporating into golden dust. Not that he was opposed to the idea, but it also meant that Rose would be the Bad Wolf once more. Which meant he had to get them away from her before she got herself killed.  
  
He spoke softly, urgently, “I’ve got to go. The Daleks just changed their minds. They  _never_  do that.”  
  
“Yes, they do,” she whispered.   
  
“Not  _pure_  Daleks, but Daleks who are being influenced by something human can. There might still be a chance for me to save these people.”  
  
Rose shook her head, tears in her eyes. “You don’t have to.” She gripped his arm with her free hand just as he gripped hers. “I can bring the TARDIS here. We’re ready. We can stop them.”  
  
“No,” he said firmly. “You are not dying for me, Rose Tyler. Stay here and calm down before you end up killing yourself.”  
  
She bit back a sob. “And what’s to stop them from killin’ us the moment you’re gone?”  
  
The Doctor swallowed then glanced up at the terrified people of Hooverville, at Tallulah, at Martha, then back Rose again for a moment longer. He turned his body and shouted up at the Daleks. “One condition! If I come with you, you spare the lives of  _everyone_  here! DO YOU HEAR ME?!”  
  
“…HUMANS WILL BE SPARED. DOCTOR…FOLLOW.”  
  
Rose blinked the tears away and squared her shoulders. “I’m coming with you.”   
  
“No, Rose,” he said resolutely. “They won’t kill you if you’re here. Stay here, calm down, and help Martha. These people are injured and they’ll need help. I’ll come back.”  
  
“And what if you don’t?” With the Daleks she really had to consider the possibility that he might  _not_  come up with a clever way to save the day and come back to them. Come back to her.   
  
“Then you get out of here, you get back to the TARDIS, and you go back with Martha. There’re protocols that will automatically activate if I die.” Not that he had any plans of things coming to that. He had to go but he would come back. Though, just in case he didn’t…  
  
Before she could object again, the Doctor leaned forward and kissed her. His lips were tender on hers, but they trembled, and there was an underlying urgency in the kiss that betrayed his fear. With the hand that wasn’t firmly clutching at the poker, she gripped the back of his head and pulled him even closer, returning his kiss fiercely. If he was going to die then, dammit, she was going to make this count.  
  
“DOCTOR. FOLLOW.”   
  
The Dalek’s harsh words caused them to break apart and they were both breathing heavier than normal. She moved her hand to his cheek and swallowed. The words were right on the tip of her tongue, because if he was going to die, he had to know. “I…Doctor, I–”  
  
His hand slipped from her neck and covered her lips before she could say the words. “Don’t,” he said, his eyes dark and reflecting the emotions she knew were in her own.   
  
He slid his hand to her shoulder, and down her empty hand. He grasped it in both of hers and she felt something press into her palm. With a wink, he stepped away from her. Their eyes lingered on each other for a moment more then he turned and followed the Daleks out of Hooverville. The urge to scream, to run after him, or to go through with it and call the TARDIS to her, was almost unbearable. She resisted. Somehow.   
  
When he was out of sight and the hum of the Dalek’s machinery faded, Rose finally looked down at what he’d given her. It was the psychic paper. She opened it, half expecting to see a message, maybe some sort of hint to his plan, but it was completely blank. What was it then? Something to remember him by like that kiss?   
  
 _Useless, completely useless_ , she whimpered. The poker slipped from her fingers, hitting the ground near Solomon’s body with a thud, and she let out a sob. She had to let it out or she was going to self-combust. She clutched the psychic paper to her chest and pressed a fist to her mouth to avoid screaming her frustration to the universe.  
  
She should’ve just called the TARDIS when she had the chance. The fire in her blood was already dying and while the ship still hummed angrily in her mind, the song was fading away fast. Even she was respecting the Doctor’s wishes and letting him go by pulling back from Rose.  
  
She felt a hand on her shoulder and Martha stepped into view. She pulled Rose into a hug and patted her back. “It’ll be okay,” she whispered.   
  
Another sob bubbled up past Rose’s lips then she took a deep, shuddering breath and forced herself to calm down. She couldn’t go to pieces–she would save that for later if things went pear-shaped. Right now she was standing in front of most of the survivors of the attack, next to Solomon’s dead body, and one of the only people who had any idea of what was really going on here. With another deep breath, Rose stepped out of Martha’s hug.  
  
“People are hurt. We gotta help them.” Rose’s voice was surprisingly level and steely. “That’s what he said to do.”  
  
“Um, maybe you ought to just sit down for a bit,” Martha suggested.  
  
“I’m fine.”  
  
“No, I mean, if you try to help people right now you’ll probably scare them half to death.” She tapped the spot just under her eye and lifted her eyebrows pointedly.   
  
“Oh. Still?”  
  
“Yeah, just a bit.”  
  
Rose thought about it for a tick and then shook her head. “It was different this time. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take for everything to cool down and ‘m not just gonna sit around and wait. They can get over it.”  
  
She tucked the psychic paper in her pocket and turned to the crowd. “Right! Everyone listen up! The Doctor’s bought us some time, but don’t think for a second that we’re out of this yet. I don’t expect the Daleks to honor their words. Solomon tried to trust them and you saw what happened to him. Now, there’s people hurt, and trapped, and there’s probably more dead here besides Solomon. Everyone who isn’t hurt should help! We need to get these fires put out, look for survivors, and someone needs to take care of any bodies we find.”  
  
“I’m a doctor!” Martha spoke up. “If anyone’s hurt, come to me. Does any one have any medical supplies? A place I can work?”  
  
The people got to it. Sentries went back to their posts and scouts went out in pairs, each armed with loaded guns, to look for any survivors outside of the town. The pigs that hadn’t fled due to injuries were put down and Martha had ushered Tallulah away when the blonde woman looked like she was about to sick up. A gunshot split through the night air and, fearing attack, everyone had rushed to arms, until a scout group returned hauling the carcass of a pigman they’d found dying not far outside of camp.   
  
They carried away Solomon’s body to deal with later and soon the bodies of four others who hadn’t survived the assault joined his. They sorted through the ruins of the shacks and tents, pulling out people that had been trapped beneath. The survivors were taken to Martha.   
  
She had been given a tent to work under near the fire, plus an oil lamp for light. Several shirts were donated that were then cut into strips and one woman had some actual bandages she gave Martha, along with some penicillin, a man supplied some rags and a bar of soap for cleaning wounds, a child ran up with some pain medicine her mum had told her to bring, and another woman gave her a needle and some thread in case anyone needed stitches. It was beyond crude, but all these people were poor and hopeless, it wasn’t like they had spare packs of suture. If anyone needed stitches it would have to do, though she would wash the thread in boiling water first. Tallulah was told to see to getting water boiled.  
  
Since her eyes were still amber, Rose remained in the tent with Martha. Tallulah brought them boiled water in whatever she could find–kettles and pots mostly. She used up an entire pot just to wash off the rags they would use to clean the cuts. She stepped out once the line got to be long and started screening people. She realized almost immediately that some of the people in line hadn’t been injured, but rather were there about older injuries or ailments, taking advantage of the free medical services being offered.   
  
The ones with the most severe wounds were sent to the head of the line to be dealt with first. The others she told to start a new line and she would take care of them. She cleaned cuts and once or twice asked Martha whether or not they needed stitches–thankfully they didn’t and she was able to just send them along with a wrap. Rose held off on treating the next person when one man was set down in the chair and the wound on his leg was deemed severe enough for stitches. So she scalded the spool of thread and Martha gave him pain medicine, then she held his hand as Martha stitched his leg shut.   
  
Once the worst wounds were dealt with, Martha started working from Rose’s line. Near the end of the group, Rose ended up treating a little girl of about seven with messy red pigtails and a burn on her right hand. There was nothing they could do except clean it. Tallulah brought her another kettle of water and Rose talked to her while they waited for it to cool.  
  
“What’s your name, then?”  
  
“Clara Mercy O’Caroll,” she replied promptly with just a hint of a southern accent. “Who are you? I ain’t never seen you before.”  
  
“My name’s Rose Tyler, and we’re just passin’ through.”   
  
“You talk funny.”  
  
“Do I?” Rose arched her eyebrow.  
  
“Yeah. You say words wrong.”  
  
“Well, to me, you say the words wrong.” She smiled and the little girl giggled.  
  
“Your eyes are funny, too.”  
  
“Yeah, s’pose they are,” Rose murmured and touched just below her eye.   
  
“How come?”  
  
“The Daleks–those metal things in the sky–I’ve dealt with ‘em before. This is because of that.”   
  
Clara blinked at her. “What happened?”  
  
“Did you see the man that left with them? They hate him and they were trying to kill him. So I stopped them.”   
  
“But why did they attack us? Did we do something wrong?”  
  
“No, sweetheart, no,” Rose said. She touched the little girl’s good hand. “It’s no one’s fault. That’s just what they do. But you don’t have to worry, ‘cos the Doctor’s gonna stop them. He’s not gonna let them hurt you and neither am I. I promise.”  
  
The little girl nodded. Rose wasn’t sure if she believed her (she didn’t completely believe herself) but it was all she could do. She tested the water and decided it was cool enough and told the little girl to put her burned hand in.   
  
Clara looked down at her hand and seemed to be considering something. “Them…Daleks–” she glanced up to make sure she got the word right “–they came from the sky. Is that where they live?”  
  
Well, there was no point in terrifying the girl of the sewers for the rest of her life. “Yes. Far, far out in the sky, beyond the stars you see. There’s only four left alive anywhere and they’re all here in New York. As soon as they’re gone, there won’t be any left, and you never will have to be afraid of them again.”  
  
“Is there lots of bad things in the sky?”  
  
“Yes, but also lots of good things, too, and trust me, the good things outweigh the bad. Now, come on, let’s get your hand wrapped so you can go find your mum.” She pulled the burned hand out of the water and gently patted it dry, then wrapped it in a bandage.   
  
“Sweetheart,” Martha said. “Tell your mum to treat that as she would any other burn, alright? Then you’re good to go. Try and not use it so much for a week.”   
  
“Okay,” Clara said, hopping out of the chair. “You gonna get them Daleks, right?”  
  
“Yeah, we’ll get ‘em.” Rose smiled tightly. “Now get on back to your mum–and remember, don’t tell anyone what I told you.”  
  
She nodded and scurried out of the tent, around the fire pit, and on her way.  
  
When the last patient was seen to and gone, Rose slumped forward onto the table, feeling utterly exhausted. Tallulah brought in another pot of water and seemed almost surprised that the line of people had all gone. Martha thanked her.  
  
Tallulah folded her arms and leaned against the wall. “So what about us? What do we do now?”  
  
“I don’t know. I honestly have no idea. Rose, did he say anything?”  
  
Rose stared at the wood in front of her and licked her lips. “No.”  
  
“Great. So then we’re just supposed to sit here and–”  
  
“But he did give me this.” Rose pulled the psychic paper from her pocket and held it up for them to see.   
  
Martha bit her lip thoughtfully. “Well, he must’ve had a reason.”   
  
“Yeah, s’pose he did, but what? Where are we supposed to go? I’ve got nothing.”  
  
“What’s that for?” Tallulah nodded to the paper.   
  
Rose opened the psychic paper and held it out. Tallulah looked down at it with interest.  
  
“‘Dame Rose Tyler of the Powell Estate’,” she read. “Well, ain’t that fancy.”  
  
“It basically means I’m a knight. Now read what it says.”  
  
“‘Free admission to–’ Hang on! It’s changed! How’d you do that?”  
  
“The paper’s slightly psychic,” Rose explained. “It shows the reader whatever the user wants it to. Or whatever you expect to see. We use it for gettin’ into places, gettin’ people to trust us.”  
  
Tallulah’s eyebrows shot towards her hairline and her voice went up an octave. “Are you from the government or something?”   
  
Rose and Martha laughed but their mirth didn’t last long. “No.” Martha shook her head. “But the Doctor–he knows we won’t just sit around and if he gave you that, then he must want us to go somewhere, but beyond that, I…” she exhaled sharply. “Rose?”  
  
“I don’t know,” she said quietly and put her face in her hands.


	22. Gamma Strike

In the end, it was Martha that figured out where they needed to go, with a little help from Frank, of course. The Empire State building. Of course the Daleks would use the biggest, most famous building in the city as their base. It was so super villain-esque that it was funny. With this new revelation, assuming they failed to stop the Daleks, none of them would be surprised if the first thing they did was to stick a giant eyestalk into the forehead of the Statue of Liberty. Or maybe they’d blast her down and build a giant Dalek monument in its place. Super villains did those kinds of things.  
  
They exchanged theories about it on the walk to the Empire State. Frank was convinced that if they messed with the Statue of Liberty, then they would have Mount Rushmore (still a work in progress) finished to resemble Daleks as well.  
  
It was completely ridiculous, discussing the enemy’s possible victory plans, but any distraction was welcome. About ten minutes after they left Central Park a man started following them. He was totally sloshed, it was obvious from the moment he opened his mouth, but they’d all had experience with drunks. They were content to just ignore him until he calling Frank names and insinuating things that made the poor Tennessean boy’s ears turn pink. Rose ended up threatening to knock the man cold if he didn’t leave them alone and something in her expression (or maybe it was her eyes, not golden anymore but still not quite brown) made him back off. Still, having a drunk bloke questioning their virtues was better than thinking about the Doctor with the Daleks, Laszlo as one of the pig slaves, and Solomon as a corpse back at Hooverville.   
  
When they arrived, there were two armed security guards stationed in the lobby. Rose didn’t hesitate, whipping the psychic paper out of her pocket, and flashed it at them.   
  
“Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, Tallulah Angel, and Frank Parker,” she said promptly. “Architects and engineers. We were called in to inspect the progress.”  
  
The man looked down at the paper, then up at the four of them. He nodded after a moment, told them where the service elevator was, then sent them on their way.  
  
“Frank Parker?” Frank muttered when they were out of earshot.  
  
“What? You live in the park. Give me a break, I had to think of names on the spot.” Rose protested.   
  
Riding up a hundred floors was slow enough in an elevator in the 21st century, never mind a1930s service one. At the rate they ascended, they may as well have walked. Martha insisted they go to the top where there was still work being done. If the Daleks were going to install an energy conductor they’d want to be as high as possible, and inconspicuous. Bit odd to put something new in a finished floor, but not in a floor that’s still in progress. Three minutes and several ear-poppings later, the lift stopped and the four bored passengers stepped gratefully onto the hundredth floor.  
  
Tallulah gasped. “Look at this place. Top of the world!”   
  
She and Frank gazed around, completely taken by the vast room they were standing in, and they weren’t even looking out the window yet. Rose had been in the building before in the year 2020. She’d been impressed then. Right now? Not so much.  
  
“Okay, now, this looks good.” Martha strode over stacks of building plans resting on an easel. Frank and Rose joined her and peered at the papers.  
  
Rose bit her lip, tucking her hair behind her ear. It might help if she knew anything about architecture.   
  
Frank tapped his finger on the top sheet. “Hey, look at the date. These designs were issued today. They must’ve changed something last minute.”  
  
Martha lifted the sheet and looked at the one below. “Do you think it was the Daleks?”  
  
“Yeah, could be.”  
  
“The energy conductor?” Rose suggested. “I doubt the original designs would’ve included that.”  
  
“Then, if these are the ones before, then we need to check them against the other. If we see something different then that’s gotta be it.”   
  
“Right.” Frank reached for the clasp holding the papers together.  
  
“The height of this place!” Tallulah exclaimed from near the window. “This is amazing!”  
  
“Careful,” Martha cautioned. “We’re a hundred floors up. Don’t go wondering off.”  
  
“I just want to see.” She waved off her concerns and drifted towards the open space where the wall hadn’t been finished.  
  
Rose didn’t look up from the plans. “Just let her go.”   
  
She lifted the top stack off the ease and set them on the ground. Martha brought down the old plans and they spread them out side by side and went to pouring over them. Frank went to stand watch in case any one–humans or pigmen or worse, Daleks–came sniffing about.   
  
“There’s a hell of a storm movin’ in.” Tallulah said from behind them.  
  
“Do you know what we’re looking for?” Martha asked Rose.  
  
She shook her head. “Nope.”  
  
“Great. Wish the Doctor were here. Oh, sorry,” she added quickly   
  
Rose dismissed her apology with a shake of her head. “Don’t waste time trippin’ over your words. I’m fine. But you’re right. He’d know.”   
  
She ran her fingers through her hair, unconsciously mirroring the Doctor’s nervous habit, a motion that did not escape Martha’s notice. Despite the situation, it brought a grin to her face.  
  
“So tell me…where did you first hook up?” Tallulah asked. “You and the Doctor.”  
  
“Oh, at my old job in London. An alien was controlling all the shop window dummies and they nearly killed me. He showed up and saved me. We’ve been together ever since.”   
  
“What about you, Martha? How’d you meet them?”  
  
“In a hospital.”  
  
“‘Course–him being a doctor.” She slapped her knees and knelt down next to Rose.  
  
“Actually, I’m the doctor.” Martha said, lifting one of the sheets. “Well, kind of.”  
  
“So you’re really a physician?”  
  
“I was training. Still am, whenever I go back.”  
  
Rose smiled. “Didn’t you realize she was a doctor earlier in Hooverville? All those people she helped.”  
  
“You helped, too. I thought he just taught you a bit of medicine or somethin’.”  
  
“He did, yeah, and I’ve had plenty of practice over the years,” Rose said. “I know enough to help, but that’s about it.”   
  
“Well, at least you can actually do something.” Tallulah sighed in frustration. “All I could do was boil water. Look at you two. You work together so easily. You’re a doctor and you fight aliens. And you’ve got yourself a nice guy.”  
  
“So do you.”  
  
“Yeah, and I should be down there, lookin’ for him. Not a hundred stories in the air watching you two sort through papers.”   
  
“Hey, if the Doctor’s down there with Laszlo, there’s every chance that he could get him out.” Martha assured her. “I’ve seen him pull off some amazing rescues.”   
  
“And then what?” Tallulah asked, shaking her head. “Don’t talk crazy. There’s no future for me and him. Those… _Dalek_  things. The one good thing I had in my life and they destroyed it.” Her voice broke on the last word. She stood up and walked away from them towards the open area again.  
  
“Yeah,” Rose murmured. “Daleks are good for that.”   
  
She lifted the full building sheet away and set it aside. They looked down at the schematics of topmost part of the building. They must’ve noticed the differences at the exact same moment because Martha let out a small, “ah-ha!” just as Rose opened her mouth to do the same.   
  
Tallulah knelt down next to them again. Martha pointed at the tiny additions to the pole. “There, on the mast, those little lines? They’re new. They’ve added something, see?”  
  
“Added what?” Tallulah asked.  
  
“The Dalekanium!” Rose hissed triumphantly.  
  
They called Frank back in to help them gather up the papers. They rolled up the useless ones and set them aside and put the two up close schematics of the mast side by side on the easel. Outside, the thunder rumbled ominously and the air began to tingle with electricity, a sign of the coming storm. The wind that drifted into the room smelled like rain. Rose shivered beneath her jacket.   
  
The main lift dinged and Rose turned. The doors opened revealing the Doctor with one hand on Laszlo’s shoulder. The half-pigman was leaning heavily against the side of the lift, looking miserable.  
  
“Doctor!” she cried.  
  
“First floor, perfumery,” he said lightly.  
  
Tallulah and Laszlo ran for each other.   
  
Rose didn’t even know her legs were moving until she was halfway towards him. The Doctor stepped out of the lift and caught her in his arms, she threw her own around him, and he hoisted her off the ground. One of her hands gripped the back of his neck, and she buried her face in the fabric of his suit. He murmured something unintelligible near her ear as he set her back on her feet. She smiled, holding him as tightly as she could for a moment longer, then drew back and stared right into his eyes.   
  
He kept his arms around her loosely and smiled. “Hello.”  
  
“Hello,” she replied with a soft smile that never left her face, even as she went on. “Doctor, if you ever do something like that again, I swear, the next time I see you, you will be regenerating.”  
  
“Well, it all worked out, didn’t it? We’re here, and I know what they’re planning.”  
  
“So do we!” She broke his grip and pulled him over to the easel. “Look, on the schematics, there’s–”  
  
Behind them, the lift dinged once in farewell as it was called elsewhere. “No, no, no!” the Doctor shouted and raced over to it. He pulled out the sonic screwdriver and shined it on the call button. “Argh! Deadlock seal.” He smacked the wall and muttered a few words that the TARDIS did not translate.   
  
“Where’s it going?” Martha asked.  
  
“Right back down to the Daleks, and they aren’t going to leave us alone up here–what’s the time?”   
  
“Uh, 11:15,” Frank said.  
  
“Six minutes to go. Did you find the Dalekanium?” He asked them.  
  
“Look, right here,” Martha pointed to the schematics. The Doctor crossed the room and looked where she was pointing. “See these two lines? They’re the only things not on the old plans. Got to be the Dalekanium, right?”  
  
“Right up on the mast,” he murmured. “I’ve got to get them off before the gamma radiation hits.”  
  
“‘Gamman’ radiation?” Tallulah, still in Laszlo’s arms, made a face. “What the heck is that?”  
  
The Doctor ignored her and sprinted across the room to the open area. He grabbed onto the beam over his head and looked down at the city of New York below them. Rose did, instantly regretting it, and her stomach did a weird little flip. She shook her head, feeling the blood leave her head, and backed away from the edge as the world spun.  
  
“Oh, that’s high,” the Doctor observed. “That’s very–blimey that’s high.”  
  
“And we’ve got to go even higher.” Martha said. She turned around, grabbing hold of a ladder, and nodded upwards. “That’s the mast up there, look. There’s three pieces of Dalekanium on the base of the mast. We’ve got to get them off.”   
  
“That’s not ‘we.’” he turned. “That’s just me.”  
  
“We’re not just going to stand here and watch you!” Martha protested.   
  
“Actually, I don’t think I’m going to watch at all.” Rose’s arms tightened on the beam she was currently clinging to for dear life. “Sorry, it’s just…really,  _really_  high and–”  
  
“No, it’s alright,” the Doctor said. “You’re going to be busy down here, anyway. I’m sorry, but you’ve all got to fight. I’ll see you when I get back. Whatever you do, _don’t_  let them follow me.” He looked between the five of them, lingering on Rose for a moment longer, then scurried up the ladder like a squirrel.   
  
Rose took a deep breath and backed out of the open space completely. “Alright, we’re…we’re gonna need weapons. Preferably something that pierces Dalekanium and works more than once.”  
  
“Why did I leave that gun behind?” Frank muttered.  
  
“Well, this is a construction sight. So there must be tools somewhere,” Martha reasoned.  
  
“Oh, over here! I saw ‘em earlier.” He loped across the room to several stack of crates near the lift. He removed the topmost lids and shouted once. “Yeah, here! C’mon, arm yourselves!”  
  
He hefted a thick sledgehammer out of the crate and turned it over in his hands. Martha, Laszlo, and Tallulah rummaged through the tools for things heavy enough to cause damage that they could actually swing. Martha chose a metal pole that looked like some sort of screwdriver, Tallulah had a large wrench, and Laszlo had a hammer.  
  
Rose shook her head at them. “Those won’t work on Daleks. Their skin is almost impenetrable.”  
  
“Then we just have to hope they send up pigs,” Martha said. Rose gritted her teeth and hefted a large ratchet out of a crate. They heard the lift whirl to life behind them and the little arrow above it began to track the lift’s progress upward.   
  
“Oh, here we go.” Rose adjusted her grip.  
  
“I should’ve brought that gun!” Frank said through his teeth.  
  
“Tallulah, stay back!” Laszlo ordered. “You, too, Martha, Rose. If they send pig slaves, they’re trained to kill!”  
  
Tallulah shuffled back all-too willingly, but Rose and Martha held firm. “Like we can’t handle a few pigs,” Rose retorted contemptuously. Laszlo tried to push them back with his arm.  
  
“The Doctor needs us to fight!” Martha said, pushing right back. “We’re not going anywhere.”  
  
“No, but they’re savages!” he shouted. “I should know. They’re trained to slit your throat with their bare teeth.”   
  
Martha made a face and glanced at the arrow above the lift again.   
  
Laszlo’s breath came in heavy pants and his legs seem to give out beneath him. He dropped to the ground, catching himself on the column. Tallulah shrieked and dropped her wrench. “Laszlo! What is it?”  
  
“No, it’s nothing. I’m fine. Just leave me.” He slumped against the column, his breath coming in laborious pants.  
  
Tallulah felt his forehead with her hand. “Ooh, honey, you’re burnin’ up. What’s wrong with you? Tell me.”   
  
Frank shook his head. “One man down. We ain’t even started yet.”   
  
“It’s not looking good,” Martha agreed.  
  
“Nope.”   
  
“Not how I wanted to die, getting killed by mutant pigs.”  
  
“I don’t wanna die at all.”  
  
Thunder rumbled around them again. Her eyes fixed on the door, Rose didn’t notice that Martha had turned around until she spoke again. “Wait a minute. Lightning!”   
  
She dropped her weapon and ran towards the open area. “Rose, c’mon!”  
  
“What’s she doin’?” Frank demanded.   
  
“Help me!” Martha shouted, struggling to lift a metal pole on her own.   
  
 _Imminent lightning strike, metal rods, approaching pigmen–oh!_  
  
“Martha that’s brilliant!” Rose cried elatedly and dropped the ratchet. “Come on, Frank!”  
  
It was mad, so mad it would probably work. Frank and Martha carried the rods and Rose created a path for them with chairs and stands. Laszlo watched them blearily and Tallulah tried to soothe him. The thunder rumbled louder than ever and the air was positively humming with electricity.   
  
“What the hell are you clowns doing?!” Tallulah shouted.  
  
“Even if the Doctor stops the Dalekanium, this place is still gonna get hit.” Martha explained quickly without stopping. “Great big bolt of lightning, electricity all down the building.”  
  
“We connect this to the lift and the pigs get cooked.” Rose finished gleefully.  
  
Tallulah smirked. “Oh, my God. That could work!”  
  
Martha connected the metal chain to the lift with two smaller rods, one on either side, and Frank went to make sure the lightning would carry through. Rose made a quick trip up the line to make sure all the poles were touching as much as possible. The thunder rumbled again.   
  
“Is that gonna work?” Tallulah asked.  
  
“If not, well, at least you don’t gotta worry about being turned into a Dalek.” Rose said. She and Martha dropped down onto the ground next to Tallulah and Laszlo who was struggling just to stay upright with no support.  
  
“I got it all piped up to the scaffolding outside.” Frank pointed over his shoulder.  
  
Martha reached for him. “Come here, Frank, just sit in the middle. And don’t touch anything metal.”  
  
Frank gathered them all in his arms, like an older brother would protect his younger siblings, and they huddled in a heap on the ground. The wind blew harder and Laszlo’s breathing was heavy in all their ears. Rose and Martha gripped each other’s hands tightly and prayed that the Doctor was well out of the way when the strike hit. The elevator dinged, the doors opening to reveal at least half a dozen pigmen inside, snorting and looking around.   
  
Martha gasped.   
  
The sky flashed white and a single deafening boom seemed to shake the building. They all flinched away from the bright light suddenly racing along the metal line towards the lift. They gasped and the pigmens squealed in pain. Rose squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her face into Frank’s shoulder. It seemed to last forever, though in reality it was probably only twenty seconds at most. When the light finally faded, they opened their eyes and curled out of their tight huddle, staring in shock at the bodies on the floor.   
  
Martha scrambled to her feet and raced over to the lift, stopping just short of the metal pole. Rose, Tallulah, and Frank followed her. The elevator was completely fried and the pigmen appeared to be dead, their bodies smoking. She almost smiled for a moment. But then she thought of Laszlo behind her and her stomach twisted in guilt. He’d escaped before the Daleks had converted him, but these hadn’t. They’d been human.   
  
Frank laughed, shaking her shoulders and she felt even worse.  
  
“You did it, Martha.” Tallulah congratulated.   
  
“They used to be like us,” she said quietly. “I suppose that makes me a murderer now.”  
  
“Hey, come on, Martha, look at me.” Rose rubbed her friend’s arm. “They would’ve killed us. They didn’t even remember being human.”  
  
“Exactly,” Laszlo said from behind them. He was on his feet and that was something. “The Daleks killed them. Long ago.”  
  
“Oh my God, the Doctor!” Martha gasped suddenly, spinning around, and raced back to the open area. Rose lingered far enough back that she couldn’t see over the side while Martha looked up through the opening at the mast.   
  
“Do you see him?” Rose called.  
  
“No!” she shook her head and gripped the ladder. “We gotta get up there.”  
  
Rose sucked in air through her teeth and strode towards the ladder purposefully. Martha looked at her questioningly but didn’t protest. Laszlo was in no condition to climb so Tallulah waited behind with him. Frank followed the girls up the ladder.   
  
Rose was once again grateful for her gymnastics skills, as well as the climbing skills she’d picked up after years with the Doctor. The ladder didn’t go up very far and once there wasn’t another ladder waiting for them.  
  
 _Don’t look down, don’t look down,_ she repeated the mantra in her head over and over. She kept her eyes trained firmly upward except when she had to check for a foot holding. Even that time she’d dangled from a barrage balloon she hadn’t been this high.  
  
Not that she was thinking about how high she was–about four hundred and thirty meters at this point–and that if she fell from here she would be dead before she hit the ground or she’d die on impact. No, she wasn’t thinking about either of those things.   
  
Not at all.   
  
“Look!” Martha exclaimed suddenly, pointing at the base of the mast where a small, familiar object gleamed in the moonlight.  
  
Rose made a strangled sound and lunged for it. She gripped the screwdriver tightly in her hands and looked up at the top of the mast, pushing her hair out of her face. She couldn’t see him? Had he fallen? A fall from this high would kill him for sure.   
  
 _Please, please don’t let him have fallen,_  she prayed and pocketed the screwdriver.  
  
From here there were no more ladders and they had to use the construction beams to pull themselves, level by level, to the very top of the mast. Frank took the lead so he could help the girls up. By the time they reached the top of the mast five minutes later, their muscles were aching and sore.   
  
When Frank pulled her up onto the final level, she looked around for her Time Lord and saw him on his back, dangerously close to the edge. “Doctor!” she shrieked and threw herself to her knees beside him.   
  
“Oh, don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.” she whispered, checking for his pulse. She sighed in relief when she felt the double beat under her fingers. It wasn’t as strong as it normally was, but it was definitely there. He was alive and still in this body, that was something. “Doctor, wake up!” she put her hands on his cheeks and turned his head towards her. “Come on, open your eyes. It’s me. It’s Rose.”  
  
He groaned, his face scrunching up in pain. “Owww, my head…”   
  
She laughed breathlessly in relief and pressed a kiss to his lips. “Oh you stupid, bloody alien! What happened?”   
  
He opened his eyes the tiniest bit and smiled at her. “Hello. You survived, then. Martha?”  
  
“She’s fine, she’s right here. Frank, too. And Tallulah and Laszlo are down below.” She pulled the sonic screwdriver out of her pocket. “I think you dropped this. You’re so useless.”  
  
“Mmmm,” he agreed, shutting his eyes again.   
  
“Why were you out cold?” Rose asked.  
  
“Um…”  
  
“Doctor,” Martha said loudly. “I couldn’t help but notice that there’s still Dalekanium attached over here.”  
  
His eyes flew open at that and he sat up with a grunt. “Oh, yeah. That’s why.”  
  
Rose helped him to his feet and handed over the sonic. He ordered them to just leave the Dalekanium where it was–the deed had already been done and they didn’t have much time. The trip back down took more than twice as long as it took to get up. Most of that was spent trying to descend from the mast, which was tricky enough without having to keep one hand on the Doctor at all times since he wasn’t at one hundred percent yet. She had to let go once and there was a terrifying moment when he seemed to sway backwards. Once they got down to the ladders things went much more smoothly, but Frank and Rose always went down before him just in case.   
  
Arriving on the hundredth floor, they found Laszlo leaning against the wall just beyond the open area and Tallulah pacing anxiously. “Oh, you’re alright!” she exclaimed in relief. “I thought you must’ve fallen for sure!”  
  
“No, we’re all alright.” the Doctor told her. “But we’re not out of this yet. I couldn’t stop the gamma strike–wait hang on, what’s that smell?” He sniffed at the air and stepped inside. He stopped just before bumping into a rod and lifted his head, following the line all the way to the elevators. “Oooh,” he made a face. “Nice one. Who’s idea was that?”  
  
“Mine.”  
  
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Martha Jones, you are a star.”  
  
Even if she wasn’t entirely proud of the act that had earned it, Martha still beamed at the praise.   
  
“But we still have the little problem of an entire army of humans beneath us that have had their minds completely erased and replaced with Dalek ones.”  
  
“There’s a  _what_?” Rose yelped.  
  
“Yeah,” he turned around and walked back out into the open area and looked down at the city below them. “I dropped my screwdriver before I could get them all off. There wasn’t time to go after it. So they now have a fully active army of over a thousand. The Daleks will have gone straight to a war footing. They’ll be using the sewer system, spreading the soldiers out underneath the Manhattan.”  
  
“How do we stop them?” Laszlo asked.  
  
“I could do it,” Rose said just loud enough to be heard.  
  
“No!” The Doctor glared down at her. “Don’t even think about it. There’s still a chance that there won’t be a slaughter. I got in the way of the gamma strike–it went through me first.”  
  
“Yeah, but what does that mean?” Martha asked.  
  
He didn’t answer her. “We need to draw fire–before they can attack New York, I need to face them–where can I draw them out? Think, think, think, think, think.” He muttered and rubbed his chin, then ran his fingers through his hair. “I need some sort of space–somewhere safe, somewhere out of the way. TALLULAH!” He spun around.   
  
“That’s me. Three L’s and an ‘H.’”   
  
“The theater–it’s right above them–and, what? It’s gone midnight. Can you get us inside?”  
  
“Don’t see why not.”  
  
He spun around, but upon seeing the fried pigs he remembered that particular way down was out of the question. “Is there another lift?”  
  
“We came up in the service elevator,” Martha said and led the way.  
  
“That’ll do! Allons-y!”


	23. Someone for Everyone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I really need to start adding here again. This is 44 chapters behind.

“There ain’t nothing more creepy than a theater in the dark,” Tallulah muttered disdainfully.  
  
Rose had to disagree.   
  
Caves, the Sanctuary Base, the basement of the Torchwood Estate, the TARDIS that one time all the lights went out, the forest on Lua, the hospital during World War II, a cornfield maze, and several abandoned warehouses–now those places had been creepy in the dark, and rightfully so, too, as all of them had been occupied by one or more monsters or homicidal aliens. A dark theater ranked somewhere with a dark museum, a dark library, and Henricks after hours in terms of creepy. Still, it was freezing in there, and she knew that in a few minutes it would be filled with Dalek-humans, or possibly the Daleks themselves.   
  
Laszlo groaned and slumped down into one of the chairs. Tallulah sat down next to him and they murmured to each other for a moment. “Doctor,” the showgirl asked, “what’s wrong with him?”  
  
The Doctor was standing on the armrests of a seat, fiddling with his sonic, trying to find the right setting. “Not now, Tallulah. Sorry.”  
  
“What are you doing?” Martha asked.   
  
The sonic screwdriver started to blip steadily and the Doctor lifted it high into the air. “If the Daleks are going to war, they’ll want to find their number-one enemy,” he explained. “I’m just telling them where I am.”  
  
“Well, that’s just mad,” Martha said. “Do you want them to kill you?”  
  
“Better me than the entire planet,” he told her. “You know what happens if they take over the planet now, don’t you?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“You two probably will never be born. That alone is enough to blow a sizeable whole in the universe. Time is _fragile_ , Martha. If you saw it the way I do you would understand. All of time could unravel if we don’t stop them now.”  
  
“Oh,” she exhaled loudly. “Okay. No pressure.”  
  
“What are you even talkin’ about?” Frank demanded. “You’re making no sense.”  
  
The Doctor waved him off. “Time is complicated. They’ll be here any minute,” he told his two companions. “You all need to leave.”  
  
“No,” Rose said instantly.   
  
“Rose–”  
  
“No! We are not doing this again!”  
  
“Martha, make her go.”  
  
“No,” Martha replied. “I’m not making her do anything.”  
  
“You stay here and you could get killed.”  
  
“And what the hell would we do if you died, Doctor? Go back home, get on with our lives like this never happened?” Rose folded her arms determinedly. “I don’t know if you’ve forgotten, but I don’t have a home to go back to. I’m. Staying.”  
  
Martha nodded in agreement. “Me too.”  
  
He exhaled angrily and glared down at his two companions, who glared resolutely right back at him. “I’m telling you to go,” the Doctor barked, jumping down. “Frank can take you back to Hooverville.”  
  
“And I’m telling you I’m not going!” Martha retorted. “‘Rule two: always do what the Doctor says–unless it’ll involves him dying, then ignore him.’ This is me ignoring you.”   
  
“Martha–”  
  
The doors at the back of the theater slammed open, the light streaming in along with the sound of many footsteps marching in sync. The six of them watched in horror as, one by one, the Dalek-humans filed into the room. There were men and women, white, black, Asian, Hispanic, all of them armed with tommy guns fitted with Dalek blasters instead of barrels.  
  
“Doctor! Oh my God!” Tallulah pulled Laszlo from the chair and they all backed into a group in the middle of the isle. “Well, I guess that’s them, then, huh?”  
  
“Humans,” Martha muttered. “With Dalek DNA?”  
  
Frank started towards one of them–perhaps he recognized him from Hooverville–but the Doctor held him back. “It’s alright. All right? Just stay calm. Don’t antagonize them.”  
  
“But what of the Dalek Masters?” Laszlo asked. “Where are they?”  
  
“I dunno,” the Doctor murmured.   
  
Rose combed the theater with her eyes for any sign of a pure Dalek, or even Dalek Sec. A flash of metal or the blue gleam of an eyestalk–but except for the hybrids, they were alone.   
  
Then the stage exploded in a flash of light and they all shrieked, ducking reflexively.  
  
Slowly, carefully she lifted her head just enough that she could peek over the backs of the seats in front of her. Two Daleks rolled onto stage, their heads rotating back and forth, no doubt searching for them. Between them, Dalek Sec crawled weakly on his hands and knees with a shackle around his neck, chained to the one on the right.   
  
She frowned. Wasn’t he supposed to be the leader?  
  
Her first Dalek had committed suicide for being even the slightest bit human. It was entirely possible they’d committed mutiny against their leader once he took on human DNA.  
  
The Doctor slowly emerged from behind the chairs just before one of the Daleks ordered: “THE DOCTOR WILL STAND BEFORE THE DALEKS.”  
  
Everyone but Tallulah, who peered carefully over the chairs, was on their feet. When the Doctor lifted his leg to climb on top of the seat in front of him, Rose reached out and caught his arm. He looked back at her wordlessly and his eyes flicked over her head for just a moment and he pulled out of her grip. _Trust me_ , he mouthed and climbed up and over the seat. She felt Frank’s hands on her arms, holding firmly and she gritted her teeth in frustration. Like he’d be able to stop her.   
  
The Doctor walked across the tops of the seats and stopped on the second row, balancing on the arm rests.  
  
“YOU WILL DIE, DOCTOR. IT’S THE BEGINNING OF A NEW AGE.”  
  
“PLANET EARTH WILL BECOME NEW SKARO.”  
  
“Oh, and what a world. With anything just the _slightest_ bit different ground into the dirt. That’s Dalek Sec.” He pointed at the disgraced figure between them who was watching the scene unfold silently. “Don’t you remember? The cleverest Dalek ever and look what you’ve done to him. Is that your new empire? Hmm? Is that the foundation for a whole new civilization?”  
  
His words seemed to have stirred something in Dalek Sec. He blinked quickly and leaned forward. “My Daleks…just understand this. If you choose death and destruction, then death and destruction will choose you.”  
  
Rose’s jaw dropped. Talk about an epiphany. Whoever’s body Sec had taken over, his genes must’ve done a serious number on the Dalek. Even her Dalek hadn’t expressed that sort of sentiment.   
  
“INCORRECT. WE ALWAYS SURVIVE.”  
  
“NOW WE DESTROY OUR GREATEST ENEMY: THE DOCTOR.”   
  
“But he can help you.”   
  
“THE DOCTOR MUST DIE!”  
  
“No.” Sec started to crawl in front of the one who’d spoken. “I beg you, don’t!”  
  
“EXTERMINATE!”  
  
With a grunt, Sec lifted himself off the ground and intercepted the ray intended for the Doctor. He screamed and pain, finally knowing for the first and last time the pain he’d once inflicted upon others. Everyone flinched away from the light and his screams, except for the Dalek-humans who remained immobile and emotionless. Sec fell to the ground, dead.  
  
“Your own leader.” the Doctor said in disgust. “The only creature who might have led you out of the darkness and you destroyed him.” He turned to the Dalek-humans and spoke quieter, almost as if prompting them. “Do you see what they did? Huh? You see what a Dalek really is?”  
  
They didn’t respond, but Rose thought she might’ve seen the barest hint of disgust ripple across their faces before settling back into the stoic mask.  
  
“If I’m going to die, let’s give the new boys a shot. What do you think, eh? The Dalek-humans, their first blood.”  
  
The Dalek on the right lifted his eyestalk up and down, like it was considering him.   
  
“Go on,” the Doctor invited, spreading his arms out wide. “Baptize them!”  
  
Rose strained against Frank’s grip but he held firm, surprisingly strong for such a skinny thing.   
  
“DALEK-HUMANS, TAKE AIM!”  
  
Moving as one, Dalek-humans lifted their guns, cocked them, and pointed them at the Doctor. Laszlo, Tallulah, Martha, Rose, and Frank huddled tightly together. The two men seemed to be ready to shield the women with their bodies and, briefly, Rose wondered if the effect of a Dalek’s ray could be spread through contact.   
  
“What are you waiting for? Give the command!” the Doctor challenged.   
  
“EXTERMINATE!”  
  
Martha whimpered and Rose gasped and they all flinched, waiting for the buzzing of Dalek death-rays that would mean the Doctor’s end, and probably theirs as well.   
  
Rose’s eyes never left the Doctor.  
  
One second passed, then two…and nothing happened. The Dalek-humans remained poised to fire, but they did not shoot.   
  
“EXTERMINATE.”  
  
Rose looked between the two lines of hybrids. Not a single one of them moved. Not so much as a twitch.  
  
“OBEY! DALEK-HUMANS WILL OBEY.”   
  
Still, they did not move.  
  
“They’re not firing,” Martha noted quietly.  
  
“Brilliant deduction, Sherlock,” Rose said through her teeth.   
  
The medical student ignored her. “What have you done?” she demanded. The Doctor didn’t answer.  
  
The Dalek seemed to be getting annoyed now. “YOU WILL OBEY! EXTERMINATE.”   
  
The man at the front asked, “Why?” And Rose felt her first true glimmer of hope all night.  
  
The Dalek spun its eyestalk towards him. “DALEKS DO NOT QUESTION ORDERS.”  
  
“But why?”  
  
“YOU WILL STOP THIS.”  
  
“But…why?” He looked at the Time Lord, still standing on the chairs, watching him.   
  
“YOU MUST NOT QUESTION.”   
  
He looked back at the Dalek and said, “But you are not our master, and we–we are not Daleks.”  
  
“No you’re not,” the Doctor agreed quietly. “And you never will be. Sorry,” he told the Daleks unapologetically. “I got in the way of the lightning strike. Time Lord DNA got all mixed up. Just that little bit of freedom.”  
  
“IF THEY WILL NOT OBEY, THEN THEY MUST DIE.” With that, it fired at the man who’d spoken.  
  
“GET DOWN!” the Doctor screamed, jumping down. They dropped to the ground, pressing themselves as low as they could go.   
  
Before the man had even properly died, the Dalek-humans turned their guns on the pure Daleks and opened fire. The Daleks shouted and fired back at their rebellious troops. The hybrids screamed as they were shot, but the others didn’t falter.   
  
“EXTERMI–”   
  
BANG! It exploded. One down.  
  
“EXTERMINATE!” BANG and down went the other.   
  
The Dalek-humans ceased fire and lowered their guns. The Doctor was on his feet quickly, moving to soothe the nearest hybrid. His companions slowly climbed to their feet and looked around at the survivors.   
  
“Saved by a Dalek-hybrid,” Rose muttered, looking at the smoking shells on stage “That’s a new one.”   
  
The Doctor must’ve heard her because he turned and grinned, half proud, half relieved. A moment later, his delight vanished. The Dalek-humans started to scream in agony, their hands flying to their heads. The Doctor cried out in protest. They clutched at their temples, pressing against their ears as if trying to block out a horrible sound. They sank to the ground, some more quickly than others, and one by one, their screams died in their throats.   
  
Martha sprinted around the seats and Rose tried to follow, but Frank held on. She elbowed him sharply. “Get off!”  
  
“Ow! Alright, alright! Dang,” he muttered, holding his chest.   
  
Rose raced down the isle, stepping over the bodies of the hybrids, and kneeled next to Martha beside one of the Dalek-humans. “What happened?” she demanded.   
  
“They killed them…” the Doctor said quietly, revolted and horrified. He looked at the bodies, at the rubble from the exploded stage. “An entire species. Genocide!” he spat through his teeth.   
  
He turned to Rose, pain and anger shining in his eyes in equal measure. She reached across the body and curled her hand around his. He squeezed her fingers like his life depended on it.   
  
“Only two of the Daleks have been destroyed,” Laszlo pointed out. “One of the Dalek Masters must still be alive.”  
  
“Oh yes,” the Doctor agreed, his voice dangerous and quiet. He let go of her hand and stood up. “In the whole universe…just one.”  
  
He stepped around them and walked up the isle, avoiding the bodies, and snagged his coat from where he’d discarded it. He put it on as he headed for the stage.   
  
“What are you going to do?” Martha asked, on her feet now.  
  
“One of the Daleks would’ve been designated as the coordinator for attack. He’ll be in their base, all hooked up to the equipment. I’m going there. Stay here or come with me, I don’t care. It’s not like you’ll listen to me either way.”   
  
He kicked the door open with his foot and it banged shut behind him. The four humans and the pig-hybrid flinched as the sound reverberated. It left behind a ringing silence, punctuated only by the hiss from the still-smoking Daleks. They looked at the death and destruction around them in despair.   
  
“What do we do now?” Martha asked.   
  
“I’m going after him,” Rose decided. She looked up the isle at Laszlo, Tallulah, and Frank. “And you?”  
  
“I…I should get back to Hooverville,” Frank said. “Let ‘em know it’s all over now. Y’all make sure you come back before you head out or anything.”  
  
“Thank you for your help, Frank.” Martha told him. He smiled and his ears reddened.   
  
“Don’t mention it.”  
  
The rest of them headed back to the sewer entrance in the storage room. The Doctor had been kind enough to leave the manhole open for them just in case. They descended into the sewers quickly, Rose grumbling the whole time about the stink. It was worse than it’d been just hours before. Laszlo guided them through the tunnels towards the Empire State Building and the lab beneath.   
  
Almost immediately they came across the source of the new odor. The hordes of bodies sprawled across each other and on the ground: murdered Dalek-humans. All four of them stopped in their tracks, Martha with one foot still in the air, when they came across the first clump. Tears filled Rose’s eyes, Tallulah threw up, and Martha had her hands pressed firmly to her face as if she might do one or both at any minute.   
  
“Come on,” Laszlo said quietly. He started down the tunnel with the bodies but Martha reached out to stop him.  
  
“No! We can’t!”  
  
“We have to go this way.”  
  
“There’s got to be another way.”  
  
“This is the quickest route,” he argued. “It’s the way he would’ve gone–if we try to go around we might not catch him in time.”  
  
“But the bodies…we can’t just…”  
  
Laszlo’s voice dropped to a murmur. “I can smell them. They’re all around us. Not every tunnel, but most of them, and probably all of the ones from here to the laboratory. We’ll just have to step over them.”  
  
He went first, stepping carefully over the legs of a Hispanic woman, then over the waist of a white man. They followed him slowly, finding a path through the bodies and tried to avoid stepping on any limbs or guns. Some of the eyes were mercifully shut, but the others were wide and glassy and seemed to follow their every move, pleading, accusing.   
  
Rose felt as if she herself was to blame for their deaths. If she’d called the TARDIS earlier…if she’d stopped the Daleks in Hooverville, then the army would’ve never been raised. She knew the Doctor would dismiss her guilt and tell her that it wasn’t her fault because it really wasn’t in the end. It had been the Daleks. All of it was their fault. They’d stolen these people, made them what they were. As much as she detested the thought of anyone dying in a place like this, she had to admit that it was better they’d died down here, because it meant they hadn’t hurt anyone above.  
  
About halfway there, Laszlo’s legs gave out again and he dropped the torch. Tallulah helped him walk and Rose and Martha took point. Almost immediately it became clear that Laszlo didn’t have the coordination to navigate the path through the bodies and the girls couldn’t help him. Leaving Tallulah to hold Laszlo up, Rose and Martha worked together to push and pull the bodies out of the way, just enough to leave a trail wide enough to walk through. There was a brief respite each time the piles of bodies ended and they listened to his breathless directions of which tunnels to take next, but they never went far before they came across another row of corpses.   
  
Eventually the army of the dead was left behind and there were no more bodies to shift. Around them the bricks became dry, transitioning into smooth stone. Laszlo groaned in pain and the more he moved, the more laborious his breathing became. Martha had to fall back and help Tallulah support him and Rose led the group with the torch in hand.   
  
They sighed in relief when they passed through the metal door into the lowest area of the Empire State building. Except for Laszlo.   
  
“Can’t breathe…” he choked.   
  
“Just you hang on, sweetheart.” Tallulah soothed. “We’re almost there. Martha, you’re a doctor, can’t you–”  
  
“I don’t know,” Martha huffed. “Unless you want to drop him here and let me have a look. But if he goes down I don’t think he’s getting back up.  
  
“I’ll run ahead,” Rose offered. “Make sure it’s safe to bring him in.”  
  
“Be careful!”   
  
“You need the torch?”  
  
“We’re fine, just go. We’ll catch up.”  
  
Rose nodded and jogged away from them. The smell of the laboratory–pig stink, death and infection–smacked her in the face before she even heard the humming of the machines. Even after the journey here through the sewers the smell of the lab still made her gag. She wrinkled her nose and endured.  
  
She slowed to a walk when she heard the Doctor’s voice. Creeping through the entrance to the laboratory, she listened to the last Time Lord attempt to reason with the last Dalek.   
  
“–seen one genocide. I won’t cause another.”  
  
She carefully leaned her head around the column so she could see where they were. The Doctor was standing a perilous few feet from the Dalek, wired up into the nook in the back of the lab. “Caan…let me help you. What do you say?”  
  
“EMERGENCY TEMPORAL SHIFT!”   
  
The wires fizzed and dropped away from Dalek Caan as he was enveloped in a bright white light. Something slammed into Rose’s head. Her temples throbbed and she gasped, squeezing her yes shut. The Doctor shouted angrily as his enemy vanished into time. When he was gone, Rose’s body relaxed.  
  
“Ah,” she moaned, holding her head. She staggered out from behind the column. “What the hell was that?”  
  
“He displaced himself to somewhere else in time,” the Doctor explained. “It’s how they got here. Oh, are you alright?”  
  
“I will be.”  
  
“What did it feel like?”  
  
“Like someone took a sledgehammer to my head. On every side. Oh, wait, never mind about me! Doctor, Laszlo’s–”  
  
“Is it safe?” Martha called tentatively. The three of them were lumbering through the doorway and Rose motioned them ahead.  
  
“Doctor,” Martha shouted. “Doctor, help! He’s sick.”  
  
Rose hurried over to them and took Martha’s place supporting Laszlo. The poor half-pigman was pale and covered in a thin sheen of sweat, his breathing shallow and wheezy. Together she and Tallulah pulled him around the corner towards the Doctor. Then his legs couldn’t keep him up for another step and they eased him to the ground. Tallulah kneeled and pulled his torso into his lap, brushing his hair from his brow. Martha knelt and pressed her fingers to his neck.   
  
The Doctor approached them somberly, his hands stuffed in his pockets. He crouched down next to them, folding his hands together.   
  
“It’s his heart,” she told the Doctor. “It’s racing like mad. I’ve never seen anything like it.”  
  
 _He knows_. Rose could see it in his eyes. The kind of bleakness she saw whenever he had to look someone in the eye when he knew he couldn’t save them, just before he smiled and lied.  
  
“What is it, Doctor?” whimpered Tallulah. “What’s the matter with him? He says he can’t breathe! What is it?”  
  
“It’s time, sweetheart,” he breathed.   
  
“What do you mean ‘time’? What are you talking about?”  
  
“None of the slaves…survived for long. Most of them only lived for a few weeks. I was lucky. I held on because I had you.” He smiled at her, his oh-so-human eyes filled with love. Tallulah shook her head. “But now…I’m dyin’ Tallulah.”  
  
Her face twisted and tears leaked out of her eyes. “No you’re not! Not now, after all this. Doctor, can’t you do something?”  
  
The Doctor slowly lifted his mouth away from his fists with just a bit of hope and more than a little determination glinting his eyes. “Oh, Tallulah with three L’s and an ‘H’…Just you watch me.” He jumped to his feet and shucked his coat. “What do I need? Oh, I don’t know, how about a great, big, genetic laboratory? Oh, look. I’ve got one.  
  
“Laszlo! Just you hold on!” He pulled a table with beakers and supplies towards them. “There’s been way too many deaths today.” His expression was manic, his eyes completely livid, and he danced from cart to cart, from table to table. “Way too many people have died.” Picking up beakers, graduated cylinders, and tubes, sniffing the contents, giving them a stir with a glass rod. He poured the contents of one cylinder into a beaker and it hissed and smoked.   
  
“Brand new creatures, and wise old men, and age-old enemies. And I’m telling you, I’m telling you right now, I am not having one more death! You got that?” He pulled the screwdriver out of his pocket and lit the flame beneath a beaker. “Not one!”   
  
Tallulah and Laszlo were staring at him, mouths agape, astonished and just a bit frightened of his sudden mania. Martha, who was used to the Doctor going into a state about some things, looked a bit apprehensive. Rose watched him, hands in her pockets, concerned, but enough so that she would try to calm him, not now. Not when Laszlo’s life depended on this energy and madness and the ideas the Doctor was willing to try when he was desperate.   
  
“Tallulah, out of the way!” He pulled a stethoscope from his pocket and hooked it around his neck. “The Doctor is in!”   
  
Tallulah lowered Laszlo to the floor and stood back to let the Doctor try and save his life.   
-~-  
  
The following morning saw the city of New York free of Daleks and pigmen. The people here had enough problems to deal with. The Depression was only just beginning and they still had a long way to go before it was officially over. At least now they could struggle to survive without having to worry about the night swallowing them up. Well, any more than you had to in one of the largest cities in the world. But without merciless xenophobic aliens and their mutant slaves haunting the under ground, things would definitely be a bit easier.  
  
Hooverville would keep on as it was, a place to shelter when there was nowhere else. Their numbers would swell as more people lost their jobs and homes and fled to join the masses they had once helped, or maybe turned their noses up at. But eventually their numbers would begin to diminish as people regained their feet and the country and the rest of the world picked up the pieces, just in time for World War II to begin. The next decade and a half would not be pleasant.  
  
With that thought in mind, Rose leaned in close and murmured to the Doctor. “You can see people’s timelines, yeah?”  
  
“In a way. Why?”  
  
“Frank will be more than old enough to fight in the War. He’s gonna go, isn’t he?”  
  
The Doctor, Rose, Martha, Tallulah, and Laszlo watched Frank walk away from them back into Hooverville to make the proposition. The time travelers stood apart from Tallulah and Laszlo, who was bundled up in a thick trench coat with his ears hidden under a hat.   
  
The Doctor lifted his head, his eyes fixed firmly on the boy’s retreating form, and inhaled slowly. “More than half of his potential futures lead him there, yes. It’s too far off to tell at this point. So many things could change.”  
  
“What about mine?” Martha asked, overhearing.  
  
“You’re a time traveller. Your timeline is, well… it’s complicated. There’s thousands of possibilities, hundreds of thousands. I’ve got so many places I want to take you and there are different sets of possible timelines for each place I take you. Even the order I take you to each place matters to determine how the timelines play out because with each day comes new experiences, new ideals, and they shape the way you react to certain situations. And from each of those possible paths stems a thousand other possible futures depending on where we go next. The most probable futures stick out prominently, but you have dozens of those.”  
  
Martha blinked several times quickly. “Oh. Wow.”   
  
“But right now, right now’s fairly simple. You’ve got two probable futures: in the first one we catch a cab back to Battery Park; in the second we walk. They overlap with Rose’s and mine but both eventually lead to us back in the TARDIS. Beyond that’s where things get complicated, but I promise that in neither of those two futures do you fall down dead, so your fine.”  
  
“And me?” Rose asked curiously.   
  
He fixed her with an unfathomable look. “Rose Tyler, you have the single most complicated batch of timelines I have ever seen. Yours make Martha’s look like a child’s puzzle. Whereas people like Frank, Tallulah, and Laszlo really only have a few possible futures. They’ve all been altered based on what’s happened in the last twenty-four hours, but when I look at them, I can easily tell you where they’ll most likely be in a week.”  
  
Frank returned ten minutes later, hands in his pockets. His expression wasn’t downcast so that had to be a good sign. “Well, I talked to them, and I told them what Solomon would’ve said. And I reckon I shamed one or two of them.”   
  
“What did they say?” the Doctor asked.  
  
Frank nodded and smiled. “They said yes.”  
  
Tallulah gasped in relief and hugged Laszlo. Rose smiled and rubbed the Doctor’s arm.  
  
“They’ll give you a home, Laszlo. I mean, uh…don’t imagine people ain’t gonna stare. I can’t promise you’ll be at peace. But, in the end, that is what Hooverville is for–people who ain’t got nowhere else.”  
  
“Thank you,” Laszlo told him. “I–I can’t thank you enough.”   
  
Tallulah smiled and hugged him. He may have looked different, but he was still the man she fell in love with–her Laszlo, just with a different face. Rose knew how that was.  
  
“So, uh, what about you?” Frank asked the time travellers. “You gonna come?”  
  
“Nah,” the Doctor said. “It’s time for us to move on.”  
  
“Well, if you’re ever in the neighborhood, you’re welcome to come back. You’ll always have a place here. I just, uh, I have something I’d like to ask. I know you’ve done a lot already, but I wanna know somethin’ before you go.”  
  
“Oh?” the Doctor arched one eyebrow.   
  
Frank licked his lips. “You’ve fought them before, the Daleks. You talk about time and aliens and things that are impossible–or were impossible until last night. Who are you?”  
  
The Doctor smiled, almost regretfully. “We’re just travellers passing through.”  
  
“We’re all travellers just passing through,” Frank argued. “That doesn’t define who we are, though. Now, I ain’t a doctor or a lawyer, and I don’t claim to be a genius or anything, but I ain’t an idiot. Even the Dalek said so.”  
  
His smile shifted to one of pride. “No, no you’re not”  
  
“Are you…are you from…outer space, too?”  
  
“Yes,” the Doctor said. Tallulah gawked.   
  
Frank lifted his eyebrows but, really, didn’t seem all that surprised. “They, uh, they got jobs goin’ out there?” he inquired, scratching at his ear.   
  
“Oh, I’m sure on some planets, yeah. But I can’t take you there. Or, well, I could, but I won’t. I’m not just your everyday random visitor to Earth, and trust me when I say your place is here. I’m not saying your life is going to be easy, but it’ll be worth it. There’s something in your future, something important. If I take you with me, it will never happen, and it _has_ to happen.”  
  
Frank’s eyes narrowed a bit. “How can you know that?”  
  
“I’m a Lord of Time, Frank. I was looking at your timelines a few minutes ago, you know, just to see if I could offer you a trip, but if I do that then…well, it’s best if you just stay on Earth. Besides,” he gestured to Laszlo. “It’s not going to be easy on him in Hooverville. He’ll need someone on his side from the get go. And people like you, Frank, they’ll come around eventually.”  
  
The Tennessean boy looked disappointed but he didn’t protest, accepting his fate with a nod. He opened his arms for a hug, looking at Martha hopefully.  
  
“C’mere you.” She motioned him forward and pulled him into a firm hug. He hugged Rose next, shook the Doctor’s hand, and then the three of them hugged Tallulah and Laszlo. Rose, Martha, and the Doctor turned to leave, but the Doctor spun around suddenly.   
  
“Oh, by the way, Tallulah. I had a chat with the manager of your revue earlier.”  
  
She blinked. “You wha?”   
  
“Well, I had to explain to him why there’s a bloody great hole in his stage and why the police were carrying about two dozen bodies out. Rose said your show got interrupted when you saw Laszlo in the wings. I, may have mentioned somewhere along the line that you were a key part in the investigation that had saved all of New York City, and if he had any sense at all, he shouldn’t fire you.”  
  
Tallulah, with two L’s and an ‘H’, smiled gratefully at him. “Thank you. Thank you, so much, Doctor.”   
  
They caught another cab and took it back to Batter Park, chatting politely with the cabbie on the way. They rode the first ferry of the day to Liberty Island, watching the Statue of Liberty get closer and closer, feeling a little more melancholy than when they had arrived.   
  
“Why couldn’t we bring Frank?” Rose asked. “What did you see?”  
  
The Doctor swallowed. “He had two potential timelines then. The first one stretched out for years, the other one…nothing. That timeline cut off just a few days after joining us. He would’ve died and he can’t die yet. I saw it when you had me analyzing his timelines–I can’t tell you if he’ll live or die in the war, but before he goes he has to start a family. He’ll have a wife and two little girls and I recognized one of his daughter’s names. She will go on to become a great mind, and in thirty nine years, when mankind first walks on the moon, she will have played a key part in getting you there.”  
  
Martha’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding me.”  
  
“No,” he smiled. “Just goes to show you that the most amazing people can come from the most humble backgrounds.”   
  
And she didn’t miss the way his eyes flicked down to Rose when he said that.  
  
When they docked on Liberty Island, they split off from the main group as soon as they could and walked around the statue base.  
  
“Do you reckon it’s gonna work, those two?” Martha asked as they walked back up the hill towards the TARDIS.  
  
“I don’t know.” The Doctor turned to look at Manhattan and the bay once more. “Anywhere else in the universe, I might worry about them, but New York, that’s what this city’s good at. ‘Give me your tired, your poor, you’re huddled masses.’ And maybe the odd pig-slave-Dalek-mutant-hybrid.” He said that all with a straight face, completely serious, but Martha laughed.  
  
“The pig and the showgirl.”  
  
“Sounds like a musical title.” Rose chortled.  
  
“Just proves it, I suppose. There’s someone for everyone.” She glanced at them out of the corner of her eye.   
  
The Doctor’s smile softened just a bit. “Yeah.”  
  
He headed for the TARDIS with Rose’s hand clasped in his, and pulled his key out of his jacket pocket.  
  
“Meant to say…sorry.”  
  
“What for?” Rose asked.  
  
“Just ‘cause that Dalek got away. I know what that means to you both.”  
  
“Hmm,” the Doctor muttered, opening the lock.  
  
“Do you think you’ll ever see it again?”  
  
He pushed open the door for them. “Oh, yes. Of course we will. The last Time Lord and the last Dalek? Ooh, we won’t be able to stay away from each other.” He followed his companions inside and shut the door without looking back.  
  
Rose caught the look in his eye as he ran up the ramp, tossing his coat aside, and moved to take them into the Vortex. She stepped up behind him when the rotor started to move up and down, signaling their take off, and put her hand on his shoulder. He turned and looked at her with eyes so deep and sad, filled with grief his lost planet, people, and all those who died to end a species that just wouldn’t stay dead, for the thousands who’d died as hybrids and mutants, for Solomon, for Laszlo and Tallulah and the life they might’ve had, and for a thousand other things she’d never been able to name and may not ever. And something else, too, something like dark fire and it made her body feel warm.  
  
Martha noticed them and cleared her throat. “Right, well, I’m about to fall over, so I’m just gonna go to bed now. Night.” She edged around the opposite side of the console and disappeared into the depths of the TARDIS. They probably hadn’t even heard her.   
  
Rose slid her hand up the Doctor’s arm, and slid it behind his shoulders, pulling him down into a firm hug. He wrapped his arms tightly around her and buried his face in her neck. She stroked up and down his back soothingly and held him. 


	24. Signs of Affection

  
  
The next morning Rose was already seated at the table, still in her pyjamas and a pair of purple fuzzy slippers, when Martha walked into the kitchen. She looked up from her cereal.  
  
“Morning–I think.”  
  
“Yeah, it’s morning. Relatively speaking.”  
  
Martha walked over to the fridge and pulled out the carton of milk. She pilfered through the cereal selection and decided to go with what Rose was having: Cookie Crisp. She poured the cereal and milk in her bowl, returning them both to their proper places, grabbed a spoon from the drawer, and sat down at the table. Rose was staring into space, chewing slowly and stirring the remaining cereal pieces around the bowl absentmindedly. There were dark circles under her eyes, which meant she probably didn’t get a lot of sleep.  
  
Martha took a bite and chewed slowly, savoring the cookies and the processed chocolate that would never match to the stuff from the Dancing Moons in its dizziest daydreams.  
  
“Sooo,” Martha asked, drawing the word out. “How’d it go?”  
  
“Hmm? How’d what go?”  
  
“Last night with the Doctor.”  
  
Rose scooped another bit of cereal into her mouth. “Fine,” she mumbled.  
  
Martha arched her eyebrow. “Fine? That’s it? Blimey, for all he goes on about how impressive he is…”  
  
“Well, it could’ve gone worse.”  
  
“Ah.”  
  
Rose shrugged. “We didn’t get to sleep for a while, though. Too worked up. I’m surprised you were able to sleep. But when I woke up he was gone and I couldn’t get back to sleep.”  
  
Martha nodded and she took another bite of cereal to hide the smirk she felt pulling at her muscles. “So, um, you two have done this before?”  
  
“Oh, yeah, loads of times. Usually after a pretty stressful day, but most of the time he doesn’t say much.”  
  
“Ah,” Martha repeated awkwardly. “Good to know. Uh, you could’ve fooled me, though. …You did, actually. I thought there was nothing going on around here.”  
  
“What do you m–hang on.” Rose made a face. “What exactly do you think I’m talking about?”  
  
“You and the Doctor. Didn’t you two…?” she trailed off and wagged her eyebrows.  
  
“No!” She put her forehead in her hand and realized exactly how all of that must’ve sounded to Martha. “No, we didn’t. We just talked. I mean it.”  
  
Martha resisted the urge to bang her head against the wall again. Really, she had to stop doing that or she was going to give herself a concussion or brain damage. Though considering the number of times she'd abused her skull in frustration, it was a miracle she hadn't done either already. “You’re kidding me. But the way you two were looking at each other…”  
  
“Yeah, well, happens all the time.”  
  
“I noticed that.”  
  
“Look, Martha, I’ve been around the Doctor for a long time. There’ve been plenty of opportunities. He’s never even really kissed me properly just because he can. For all I know, Time Lords don’t even do stuff like that. Not like we do, anyway.”  
  
This time she did hit her head against the wall. Yeah, I’m definitely going to get a concussion. She ignored the throbbing in her skull and sighed loudly. “You don’t think he’s leading you on?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Good. Otherwise I’d spike his tea with aspirin.”  
  
“Martha, stop it.”  
  
She huffed. “Fine. …Of course there’s also the possibility that Time Lords do fraternize with us lowly apes and he’s just being a bloke.”  
  
“We’ll then he’s the biggest bloke of them all. If you’re this tetchy after seeing us two months, just remember that we’ve been together for two years. We’ve never…danced. The kissing only started up just before you came.”  
  
“Oh yeah? How’d that happen?” she asked interestedly.  
  
“We…we were visiting a market. He must’ve seen me looking at this rock on the vendor’s table. The vendor said it was rare, only found on some planet that didn’t exist anymore. It was shiny and blue, like the color of shallow water in the sunlight, about the size of my palm and shaped like a star. I thought it was beautiful, but I didn’t want to waste that much on a rock, not when we could go to the planet ourselves one day, you know before it exploded or whatever, and get one there. It was more than we had on us anyway and there weren’t any cash machines around.  
  
“I’d already moved onto the next few stalls, didn’t notice he’d stayed behind until he pressed the rock in my hand.” She smiled. “The Doctor had called the vendor’s bluff, told him he’d been to that planet only last week, and that it was fine, turning around it’s sun as usual, and threatened to report him for tryin’ to rip us off. He persuaded the guy to lowered the price.”  
  
Martha raised her eyebrows. “But why’d he do that if he could just take you there himself?”  
  
She shook her head. “I have no idea–maybe because we wouldn’t be able to get that particular rock or something. Anyway, after that I kissed him, just to say thanks, and he really didn’t seem to mind. After that it was just little kisses here and there for whatever reason, but for the most part it’s just the usual hugging. But like I said, plenty of chances.”  
  
Rose pushed away from the table, closing the conversation as effectively as slamming a door in the medical student’s face.  
  
After that, Martha was a woman on a mission. If the Doctor was just leading Rose on, she might just actually shove aspirin–okay, maybe not aspirin because she didn’t want to actually kill him–but she’d probably deck him to start. But finding one errant Time Lord in a pandimensional ship proved harder than she’d hoped. She tried every door she came to and found the pool, the antigravity room, various sports courts, two rooms that must’ve belonged to former companions, the infirmary, and her room. That’s when she started to get annoyed. Keeping on, she found the garden, the Zero Room, a butterfly garden, a karaoke bar, the console room, and finally arrived back at the kitchen.  
  
That’s enough! Come on, I know you’re smart and I know you can hear me, she thought with all her might. And if you care about either at them at all then you’ll help me out her! This has got to be driving you mad, too.  
  
Evidently the TARDIS decided that she agreed with her because Martha only had to open two more doors–the pool again, and another random cupboard–before she found herself looking at into the library, the Earth History section, to be specific. Out of all the places she’d found so far, this was the most likely place he’d be. She navigated the rows of books and had to double back twice because she swore the TARDIS enjoyed moving things around to confuse her, even when they were supposed to be working together. She found the Doctor fast asleep on the couch.  
  
The sight was odd.  
  
She knew he didn’t sleep often, and while she hadn’t ever seen him sleep in all the time she’d been on board, she knew that when he did, it was usually near Rose. He must’ve accidentally nodded off. He looked peaceful there and about a hundred years younger without old eyes looking out from a young face.  
  
She was tempted to just leave him be and approach him later, but she knew that if wasn’t okay to wake him up then the TARDIS wouldn’t have allowed her to find him. So she slipped back behind the nearest bookshelf and grabbed three of the thickets books she could find and stacked them on top of each other.  
  
Martha carried them over to the coffee table in front of the couch and she dropped them.  
  
The books hit the table with a very loud THUD that resonated through the silent room and caused the slumbering Time Lord to literally jump awake. He let out a very unmanly yelp and leaped off the couch. Looking around wildly, his eyes locked onto her and there was a split, horrifying second when she saw absolutely no recognition in them whatsoever. Then he scowled.  
  
“Martha Jones, what the hell is wrong with you!? Don’t you know better than to scare a sleeping Time Lord awake?”  
  
“No, actually, I didn’t,” she replied, trying to keep her bravado going, but seeing him look at her that way was a bit unsettling. “You learn something new everyday.”  
  
Growling something that didn’t translate, he sank back onto the couch and rubbed his face in his hands. “I’m assuming that you have a perfectly good, very important reason for giving me a hearts attack.”  
  
“Yes, I do, as a matter of fact.” Martha folded her arms. “You, Doctor whatever-your-real-name-is, you are either the biggest prat or the biggest bastard that ever lived.”  
  
He looked so utterly lost that at any other time it would’ve been funny. “What did I do?”  
  
Martha shoved the books off the table and sat down primly on the smooth surface. “I’m hoping that you’re just being a prat, because otherwise you’re going to march your skinny arse into that control room and take me home.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“What exactly is your relationship with Rose?” she demanded.  
  
“I–I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”  
  
Martha glared at the Time Lord and she knew she wasn’t imagining it when she saw him shrink back a little. “Do you love her?”  
  
“Martha, I don’t see–”  
  
“Oh, just shut up, you bloody alien, and answer the question.”  
  
He sighed, “Isn’t it obvious?”  
  
“Doctor,” she warned.  
  
He sighed, staring at her for a moment, and then nodded wordlessly.  
  
“Finally!” she shouted and he flinched. “Now get off your rump and go tell that to her.”  
  
“What, now?”  
  
“Yes, now!”  
  
“Just like that? Good morning, Rose. I love you. Fancy a cuppa?” He shook his head derisively.  
  
“What’s wrong with that? That’s what most couples do every morning. That’s what my Mum and Dad used to do.”  
  
“And look how they ended up.”  
  
She surged to her feet and tried to decide if she was just going to storm off or hit him first.  
  
“I’m sorry!” he apologized quickly. “I didn’t mean that.”  
  
“Yes you did,” she snapped. Taking a deep breath, she exhaled slowly and sat back down. “But you’re right. Look where they ended up. While Mum was still crying at night, Dad had already had himself a girlfriend: Annaliese. It hurt all of us, but Mum most of all.”  
  
He sighed irritably, unaware how close she was to testing. “Is there a point to this?”  
  
“I’m getting there, keep your pants on.” She folded her arms again. “Mom told us one time–me, Tish, and Leo–that her biggest regret was that she and Dad didn’t try harder and she wishes she’d realized that when she had the chance. Now it’s too late. It’s been too long, they’ve both done so may things, said so many things, and they’re to proud to admit that there still might be anything there. Is that what you want to happen with you and Rose?”  
  
“She won’t leave,” he said, as confident as a teenager in love for the first time. “She promised forever.”  
  
“So do humans at weddings. ‘Till death us do part.’” Martha quoted. “I’m not blind, Doctor. I’ve been with you nearly three months and I’ve seen it. I know you love her, and I know she loves you. But one day you might do something or say something–or maybe you won’t say the right thing–and you’ll have to watch her walk out those doors for the last time.”  
  
“Or I’ll have to watch her age and die,” he reminded her.  
  
“That’s life.”  
  
“Not for me.” The Doctor rested his elbows on his knees. “I don’t age, not like you do, and when this body dies, it will regenerate into another one. Rose can’t do that.”  
  
“But I thought she had some weird energy inside her. It’s been helping her heal faster. You’ve said so yourself.”  
  
“No, I didn’t.” He shook his head and put his chin on his knuckles. “I said she’s been healing a bit faster than she used to, but Huons don’t do that. It’s a miracle that the particles in her are benign and aren’t killing her. My people didn’t destroy them because they were helpful.”  
  
“Well, still–”  
  
“What more is there to say? It doesn’t matter what I do, I’m still going to lose her. She’ll leave me eventually, one way or another.”  
  
“Exactly!” Martha reached out and seized his wrists. “Oh, you stupid idiot. You are going to lose her one day. Life isn’t like The Notebook where couples die together in their sleep. So you two haven’t got forever, but you have got now. Why are you wasting time worrying about the future? Do you honestly think that if you keep your distance that it’ll hurt less when she’s gone?”  
  
He said nothing and Martha resisted the urge to sigh. Rose was right. When you really wanted him to talk the Doctor was like a shy three year old. And she wasn’t in the mood to deal with his stubbornness or wait for him to finish brooding.  
  
“Because I’m tellin’ you, it won’t. I’ve never been in love. Fancied a few guys, me, but never loved them so I’m not speaking from personal experience or anything.” She shook his wrists lightly. “But if I’m just a stupid ape, then how come I can see what you can’t?”  
  
“Because you’re human,” the Doctor told her. “And for all your faults, humankind has always been and will always be one of the most clever species in the universe.”  
  
Martha sighed and let go of him. “Look, Doctor, I know feelings aren’t exactly your strong point, but you should tell her how you feel.”  
  
“She knows.”  
  
“So? That doesn’t mean she wouldn’t like to hear you say it. It doesn’t have to be some big event with flower petals and candlelight. Just…tell her. Oh, and you should definitely give her a proper kiss, too.”  
  
“Martha Jones, has it ever occurred to you that my people had different customs than yours? Hmm? That commitment wasn’t shown with rings and that love wasn’t expressed with kissing and sex?”  
  
She sat up straighter, interested. Yes, it had occurred to her on multiple occasions, but she’d also assumed that he would understand he’d have to follow some human courting customs considering the woman of his affections was human. Then again, it was the Doctor.  
  
“Time Lords thought themselves above emotions like love. Marriages were almost always arranged based on political usefulness and genetics. Love was a novel emotion for children, whispered behind hands when the instructors weren’t looking, sometimes fantasized about, but eventually our children were taught that such things were beneath them. Most Gallifreyans, however, refused to let their lives be dictated for them in such a way.  
  
“Is there a difference?” she asked. “You said ‘Time Lords’ and ‘Gallifreyans’ like they’re separate.”  
  
“I never told you this? No, I told Rose,” he said to himself. “All Time Lords were Gallifreyans, but not all Gallifreyans were Time Lords. ‘Time Lord’ is a title, a rank if you’d like, earned through decades of study.” He stopped talking abruptly and swallowed, continuing after a moment. “But those Gallifreyans who chose to find love, developed their own courting rituals, their own ways of showing affection. Time Lords frowned upon such, of course, and so the gestures were discreet, especially in public. Over time, these gestures became the standard.”  
  
“Such as…?”  
  
“Grasping each other’s hands, not as a gesture of greeting, is comparable to humans embracing. A hug in public would be like two humans snogging in public.”  
  
“So, hugging is like kissing to you?” she asked, not quite following. “But you’ve hugged me. You’ve hugged a lot of people.”  
  
The Doctor smiled. “Well, I’ve always been something of a rebel. When I hug you, Martha, the intended gesture is the one you perceive. But you must understand: our society was strict. Stuffy. Touch was permitted, but usually reserved for kin unless entirely formal. If two people were to touch it was usually a sign affection in some form. Not just romantic. Two people shaking hands in greeting would be like two humans hugging in greeting. To see two people holding hands was not entirely scandalous, but it was a sign that they were comfortably familiar. If they were not of the same house then it could be assumed their relationship was something like romantic. But if they were to ever openly embrace in public, it would be like two humans kissing in the middle of Trafalgar Square, surrounded by children.”  
  
Martha couldn’t help but giggle at the mental image, but she also felt a pang of sadness. One thing she had noticed about the Doctor was that he loved to touch things. He would run his fingers along walls, fiddle with random objects (sometimes licking them, but that was something in itself), and his hands always sought out Rose when she was near. Had he always been this way or was this a trait of this particular body? How painful would it have been for him to be on Gallifrey when he had to keep his hands firmly to himself?  
  
“So, if two people were to hug, it would be a surefire sign that they were in love. I saw a couple hugging once,” he added quietly. “I was very little. I’d never seen anyone do it before. It was strange to me. They just seemed so happy, though, so from then on I associated hugging with happiness, even after I learned that it was taboo amongst Time Lords and why. When I hug you, Martha, I do it because I am happy. When I hug Rose…I do it because I know what it represented on my planet and because I know what that couple felt when they were hugging.”  
  
“And kissing?”  
  
The Doctor glanced down at her. “The first time I saw what you’d consider proper kissing was well into my first life, after I’d run away from Gallifrey, and had landed on planet Earth. Married couples did kiss, but it was always in private, and it was very chaste by human standards.” He looked over her head at something. “There were other things, too. Telepathy, for example, played a part, and words. We had so many words, Martha, and so many tenses. So many ways to tell someone how you felt–dozens of ways to express one emotion and each one is entirely unique.  
  
“You humans say ‘I love you.’ It is a wonderful, if terrifying phrase when spoken with the emotion behind it. But it is also very…lacking. You’re stating that you love them at that particular moment. Did you love them the moment before? Will you love them in the next? We had ways of saying ‘I loved you once, but no longer and never again.’ Or ‘I loved you once, but no longer, though I could possibly do so again in my future.’ Or ‘I love you this moment and will do so in the next.’”  
  
He smiled to himself and when he spoke again, his voice was quiet. Revenant. “And there was one, so complex and deep that there is no way I could ever explain it adequately. But the simplest translation is: ‘I love you for eternity, my hearts.’ Saying this word to someone would mean that you had begun falling in love the moment you met, you loved them in your present state of being, and would continue to do so across all of your lives and theirs, anywhere in time and space, for as long as you existed, and that when their hearts stopped beating, so too would yours.  
  
“It was never said when others could hear. At weddings, if the couple would say it, they would have to whisper it to each other, because just to hear the word even if it wasn’t said to you would be…” he shook his head, at a loss of how to explain it. “I read about it once and I felt like I was tarnishing it but just working out how to pronounce it in my head. Words have power, Martha, and this one has more than you’ll ever understand. I don’t even understand it fully yet.”  
  
“Is that why you’ve never told her you love her?”  
  
He didn’t respond. At closer inspection she wasn’t entirely sure he was even breathing.  
  
But she finally understood. She had been waiting for him to do something that would make sense to her as a human. Looking back with this new information, she realized he’d been telling Rose how he felt for as long as she’d been around and long before. Every time he so much as brushed his hand across her back he was telling her. And she understood why nothing was going on behind closed doors. For a man who’d grown up in a society where a simple hug was as powerful as a good snog, sex would be like exchanging marriage vows.  
  
“I think you should tell her exactly what you told me, Doctor, because if I didn’t understand then you shouldn’t expect her to, either. And I think you should learn how powerful that word is. But in your own time,” she added. He still didn’t respond verbally, but his smile was enough.  
  
She gave him a smile in return and patted his arm, standing up. “You can go back to sleep now if you want. There’s a butterfly garden around here somewhere that I want to get lost in.”  
  
“Butterfly garden, really?” the Doctor raised his eyebrows. “Haven’t seen that room in a hundred years or so. I thought for sure it must’ve been jettisoned.”  
  
“Guess she really does like me then. She helped me find you in here, after all.” With that she strode out of the library to let the Doctor get back to sleep.  
  
But of course he couldn’t fall asleep after that. He hadn’t meant to nod off to begin with. Hadn’t even realized he was tired or he would’ve gone back to Rose’s room to sleep. He left the library to wander the halls, unable to sit still with thoughts buzzing around his head. Martha’s words, Shakespeare’s words, Jackie’s, Mickey’s, Shareen Costello’s, that Dalek’s, the Beast’s, Donna’s, Jack’s words, and the rules of his people. The people he’d destroyed and whose legacy now rested solely upon his shoulders.  
  
For a Time Lord to love a human, never mind actually be in a relationship with one was almost taboo. Leela and Andred’s relationship had been almost entirely unique, as had the circumstances of her remaining on Gallifrey. He heard that she’d conceived and had given birth to a child at one point. That, perhaps, had made the people more open to her.  
  
In the end there were dozens of reasons he shouldn’t attempt a deeper relationship with Rose, and only one reason why he should, but that one reason was more than enough.  
  
But how was he supposed to do that? He was somewhat familiar with human courting customs, but he was completely at a loss at how they really began. Did they officially declare it to each other like on Gallifrey, or did they just slide right on into it without really saying anything? Or was that something that depended on the couple?  
  
Were he and Rose already in that kind of relationship without him realizing it? What did humans do in relationships again? They held hands, hugged, went on dates to fun and/or romantic places, spent a lot of time together, gave gifts, joked around, smiled, laughed, kissed…  
  
Oh, well then. That explained a lot. Like why people always assumed they were a couple. How long had that been going on? A while, he realized when he actually thought about it. She’d once said that watching the world end had been their first date.  
  
The Doctor exhaled loudly, puffing out his cheeks. Bugger.  
  
He couldn’t just waltz up to Rose out of the blue and tell her he loved her. Or, well, he supposed he could, but it didn’t just seem right. Not after all they’d been through. He’d considered telling her a few times before. After she’d gotten her face back, before he fell into the Pit, several times as she mourned for her mother, before he was led away by the Daleks in the park…  
  
Declarations could wait, he decided. Right now, he just wanted to see Rose Tyler smile.  
  
He headed for the control room and went through a list of places they could go that they’d never been to before. Peaceful places, beautiful places, with things that would make her eyes light up with wonder and smile and laugh. Some place warm with no pigs or sewer systems involved. A theme park, perhaps–no, too crowded. Somewhere remote, then, or at least a popular place before it became popular. Peaceful, beautiful, remote, and guaranteed to make Rose Tyler smile…and why not make her the first person to smile at it?  
  
Five minutes later he was moving around the controls and silently pleading with TARDIS to fly true. After facing Daleks and what nearly happened to Rose (and since his sleep had been interrupted), they deserved–no, needed–a day where the most dangerous thing they had to worry about were the crabs the size of golden retrievers. But they were very sensitive and could be scared away with the right setting on a sonic screwdriver or chicken legs, both of which he had. He hoped to land somewhere far from their nesting grounds, but you could never be too sure.  
  
The ship lurched and he grabbed on to the console to avoid falling and bashing his head into the seat. Behind him he heart a feminine yelp and he craned his head to see. Rose was in the doorway, holding onto one of the corals for dear life.  
  
“Sorry!” he called over the noise of the rotor. She nodded, smiling meagerly.  
  
The TARDIS shuddered to a halt and he pulled himself up right. Rose let go of the coral and rubbed her wrist gingerly. From further within the ship they heard Martha shout, “A little warning next time!”  
  
He laughed to himself and felt that justice had been served.  
  
“So, where are we?” Rose asked.  
  
“The planet of Kataa Flo Ko, in the year 8900 BC.” He beamed at her. “No alien invasions, no Daleks, no running for our lives…”  
  
“Sounds great,” she agreed. “Let’s go out, then.”  
  
“No, hold on,” he looked her up and down. Standard dress: jeans, trainers, and a t-shirt. “I think you’ll be a bit too hot in that.” Glancing over her shoulder, he added, “And you definitely will be.”  
  
“Why?” Martha asked and Rose jumped, startled. “What’s out there?”  
  
“Well…if I’m right, and I hope I am…” the girls watched him stride over to the doors and look outside. “Yes! We are on Kataa Flo Ko, a planet where almost everything is made of gemstones.” He shut the door and walked back to his companions, hands clasped behind him. “Well, except for the bit of vegetation, but it still has some crystalline properties. I’ve been here a few times before. This is the planet closest to the nearest sun that you can survive on, so it’s pretty hot, and to answer your question, Martha, we are at a beach.”  
  
“What’s the sand made of?” Rose asked interestedly.  
  
“Weathered and crushed gems, of course,” he said, smiling when he saw their eyes light up.  
  
Fifteen minutes later the three of them were piling out of the TARDIS with swimsuits on under shorts and sleeveless shirts, clothes for later, towels, two blankets, a basket of food, three bottles of appropriate type of sunscreen, several glass bottles and vials with corks to take some of the sand in, a box of chicken legs to throw at any giant crabs, a camera, and the Doctor had a small pack slung over his shoulder with mysterious contents he refused to divulge until later.  
  
He wished he’d had the foresight to turn the camera on before letting them see the planet he’d landed them on, because Kataa Flo Ko was definitely one of the wonders of the galaxy, and, technically, Martha and Rose were the first humans to ever see it, and both were completely stunned into silence.  
  
The TARDIS had landed on the edge of a plain of green grass that swayed in the breeze, shimmering in the light. The sky was a mix of light blue and lavender and one sun shined brightly in the sky. Another sun, brilliantly blue, was further away but it was enough to give the sky its purplish tinge. The sand was pale like on Earth, but it shined and shimmered with color and stretched for miles and miles in either direction, while the ocean was clear and blue, throwing off a million rainbows as it crashed onto shore.  
  
  
  
Rose broke the silence first, a wondrous smile on her face. “It’s beautiful!”  
  
“Yeah,” the Doctor agreed, eyes for her and only her. “Well, come on. It takes only eighteen hours for this planet to rotate once. Time’s a-wasting!” He made a face. “Ooh, remind me never to say that again.”  
  
He chose them a spot far enough from the water that they wouldn’t be hit when the tide came in and then they set up camp. While they worked and applied sunscreen, the Doctor talked.  
  
“This system is about twice the size of Earth’s, and it’s got around fifteen planets in it. They’re all heated by a blue star–relatively small considering how big they can potentially be–and a yellow star that’s about twice the size of your sun. Unfortunately, the blue sun only has about ten thousand years left to live. By the time humans make it to this system, it’ll have long since vaporized, leaving the surrounding planets to be heated by the yellow star. It’s big enough to keep some of them going, just not as hot as they used to be. But many of them are going to become icy and cold. Like Pluto.”  
  
“Oh, didn’t you hear? Pluto isn’t a planet anymore,” Martha said.  
  
“Says who?”  
  
“Astronomers…NASA…that lot.”  
  
The Doctor snorted, “Yes, because humans have the right to determine what is and isn’t considered a planet. If it’s a ball and it has a stable orbit around a star, it’s a planet, simple as that.”  
  
“I know that.” Martha rolled her eyes. “It’s just not considered a proper planet anymore. It’s a dwarf planet.”  
  
“Compared to what? Earth or all the other planets in your solar system? That’s a horrible scale, complete rubbish. When you consider all the planets in your galaxy alone, Earth is a dwarf planet.”  
  
“Hey, don’t get cross with me! I’m just telling you what I heard on the telly.”  
  
“Right, because if it’s on television it has to be–”  
  
Rose cleared her throat, arching her eyebrows, and they both looked at her guiltily. “If you can’t play nice, you’re gonna have to play on opposite ends of the beach.”  
  
“No ta.”  
  
Martha craned her neck. “That might be a bit difficult, anyway. I can’t even see the end.”  
  
Rose rolled her eyes. “So what’s gonna happen to this place, Doctor?”  
  
“Well, Kataa Flo Ko and her sisters will escape that icy fate due to their proximity to the yellow sun, but the winters will be just a bit longer. Plus this place doesn’t have soil right for farming anything alien so humanity will, for the most part, just pass this whole system by. All the planets here are made the same way, except for Kataa Nu Kan, but it’s entirely gaseous. Its name literally means ‘No Ground Planet’ in the language of the people that named it! Clever, eh?”  
  
“What’s Kataa Flo Ko mean?”  
  
“‘Second Rainbow Planet’ because it’s twin, Kataa Fi Ko–that’s ‘First Rainbow Planet’–is closer to the sun. Each land mass looks like the gem it’s primarily composed of, so from space the whole planet looks like one giant messy rainbow! I should show you when we leave,” he added as an afterthought.  
  
“All the planets in this system are made of gemtones, but usually only one or two types. In fact, all three of the systems in this area are mostly made up of crystalline planets. Two are safe to inhabit, but the other one has an Xtonic star. The rays it produces are pure poison; the light would vaporize a human on contact. Nothing can survive in that entire system,” he added grimly. “But, if I’m not mistaken, some of the planets get leisure palace chains on them far in the future. Hmm. Always wanted to go there. Maybe later.”  
  
Martha and Rose glance at each other worriedly. “Are we safe here?” Martha asked.  
  
“Hmm? Oh, yeah, don’t worry. We could probably see that star from here, but we’re too far away for its rays to hurt us,” he assured them.  
  
By the Doctor’s calculations, they still had five hours of daylight left to enjoy, and enjoy it they did.  
  
Rose got a vial of the shimmering sand for herself and started to make one up for her mum. She found an area of sand that had a particularly golden shimmer filled the little spherical container. Just as she was about to pop the cork in, she froze. Oh, right. Jackie Tyler wasn’t waiting for her to come back to Earth for a visit. Not the Earth in this universe, anyway. For a just a moment she sank down into that dark part of her mind where the pain and grief at the loss of her mother always lurked and tilted the vial to empty it. She decided against it, however, and pressed the stopper firmly into place. She helped Martha fill ones for her family, darting along the beaches to places with higher concentrations of a specific type of shimmer. As an afterthought, she decided to make one up for Shareen that she’d deliver whenever they took Martha home.  
  
The Doctor watched them with a smile on his face. Martha had once accused him of being able to enjoy anything–which he could, almost–but in reality, it was human beings that had that gift. His brain was analyzing everything about this place as it always did. Why the sky was blue in the mornings, lavender in the late afternoon, and a mixture of both at noon; how much of the heat was supplied by each sun; what the sand around them was likely composed of; why the vegetation sparkled, why the water threw off rainbows; what direction the wind was blowing from. It was all cycling through his brain, being calculated and reasoned, and filed away with all the other information he had about this planet. But his companions, they saw the beauty and nothing more. He didn’t doubt that they wondered about all of that, but their brains didn’t automatically work out why the things around them were the way they were. They could take it at face value and just enjoy it.  
  
And he was glad they were enjoying how beautiful it was here. There were enough precious metals in ten feet any direction them to make them richer than Martha would ever be on a doctor’s salary. In fourteen thousand years, human beings would find the three sister systems, and they would discover the riches they beheld. They would see the beauty, and they would see the profit to be made. The Xtonic system would remain untouched until leisure companies moved in, but the other two, the ones without poisonous suns, would be divided up. The ones with sentient species would be left alone for the most part, and some of the uninhabited ones would be set aside as “nature reserves” to make people feel better about what would happen to the rest. They would be mined, and by the year one million, most of the planets would have been picked clean, left to die in space.  
  
He watched Rose kick the sand as she walked, sending up a flurry of silver into the air with each step. She looked up and caught his eye, smiling, and he smiled right back at her automatically. She didn’t need to know what would become of Kataa Flo Ko and he would stop thinking about it.  
  
The five hours of daylight passed in bliss, the kind that seemed to last forever, but never quite long enough.  
  
The Doctor was wearing only a sleeveless shirt and swim trunks. Martha, having never been to the beach before with them, was unaccustomed to seeing the Doctor in anything less than one of his dress shirts and occasionally an undershirt. She was honestly surprised to see how human he looked underneath all those layers. When he caught her staring, she admitted to wondering if he’d secretly had spots or stripes or something else really alien on his skin that he always chose to keep hidden. He laughed merrily and turned his arms over to further affirm that there were no such marks.  
  
They went up the beach with tiny buckets to hunt for seashells. Both humans were surprised to see that some of the shells were shaped similarly to ones on Earth, while others were completely bizarre, but they all sparkled in some way. Some were small enough to be made into jewelry and Martha found a conch shell that was bigger than the Doctor’s hands. Some of them were like one big gem; others were more like Earth shells but with flakes of shining stone within, scattered randomly or arranged in a pattern.  
  
They waded knee-deep in the water, kicking and splashing, sending up rainbows of color into the air. At first it was just for the sake of feeling the water and enjoying the colors…and then the Doctor shoved a wave of water in the direction of his companions. They both yelped as the wave made contact with their backs. Martha whirled around immediately and glared. Rose, still tense in surprise with her hair plastered to her neck and shoulders, slowly turned to face the Time Lord. She arched her eyebrows, he grinned shamelessly, and then it was war.  
  
The girls splashed water at him and he backed away, one hand up to ward off their attack while the other returned fire. He started to inch around them towards the deeper water and they turned with him, moving closer even as he tried to flee. When he was waist-deep in the water, he ducked under and shot off. Martha and Rose stilled so they could see where he’d gone. The water was clear, the sand underneath it a pale cerulean–surely a tan humanoid would stick out like a sore thumb, right?  
  
Wrong.  
  
Martha was just wondering aloud if the Doctor’s ‘superior Time Lord physiology’ allowed him to be invisible underwater, when he popped up in front of her and splashed water at her face. Shrieking, she swiped her hands at the surface of the water to splash him but he was already ducking back below the surface.  
  
“Okay, he’s not gonna sneak up on us again,” Martha growled. “We should stand back to back so we can cover all sides.”  
  
Rose nodded, turning so she was facing away from her friend, and scanned the water intently. She saw a flash of brown out of the corner of her eye and turned, drawing her hand through the water so that when he popped out of the water a few seconds later he was greeted with a wave of water to the face. While Martha turned to attack, Rose lunged at him. His arms were busy deflecting the water so he didn’t notice her until she’d latched onto his side. She twisted around to his back and clung to him like the ape she was, with her legs wrapped around his and her arms around his shoulders in an attempt to lower his defenses and keep him in place.  
  
“Let ‘im have it!” she shrieked, ducking her head behind his shoulder to avoid most of the onslaught.  
  
He tried to back away but she tightened her legs around him and put a stop to that. She was sure he could break free of her grip if he really wanted to or just rop down into the water to get her to let go but he did neither.  
  
“Oi! You’re cheating!” the Doctor howled over the water being flung at him.  
  
She stretched her head up to whisper in his ear. “‘All’s fair in love and war.’”  
  
He turned his head, eyes glinting in a playfully dangerous sort of way. “Oh, is that so?”  
  
Quick as a flash, he twisted in her grip so they were pressed chest to chest and kissed her. He slid his hands around her waist, his fingers cool against her wet skin and she shivered, though not from the cold. One of her hands went up to cup the back of his neck and she pulled up her legs so they were around his waist instead of his legs. She felt him smile against her lips and then he spun them around. Martha apparently had yet to notice what was occurring because she kept up her relentless assault. When the water hit her back, she broke the kiss with a startled gasp. Water hit her again, pushing her hair forward so some of it stuck to the Doctor’s face.  
  
The Time Lord was grinning wickedly.  
  
“Cease fire!” she shouted. “Martha! Quit it!”  
  
The attack halted abruptly and Martha straightened up, taking in the positions of her friends, and she laughed. “How’d that happen?”  
  
Rose turned her head. “He cheated.”  
  
“‘All’s fair in love and war,’” he repeated cheekily.  
  
“Hmph.”  
  
While the girls waited where they were, the Doctor ran to the beach to get something out of the backpack he’d brought. Rose curiously tested her buoyancy in the alien water and found she didn’t quite float as easily as she normally did. That wasn’t unusual. On one planet she’d found it impossible to stay below the surface for more than a few seconds, and on another she’d had to wear a special buoyant bodysuit so she wouldn’t sink right to the bottom. The Doctor came back with three pairs of goggles–even though the water here had less salt than the oceans on Earth, there were still properties in it that would hurt even his eyes–and two things that resembled oxygen masks. Breathers, he called them, and explained that they drew in the air and oxygen from the water around them so they could breathe underwater.  
  
“Try to keep your breathing even and normal,” he continued as he help them fit the masks around their faces. “Breathe too deep and you might not have enough air available.”  
  
“Why do we need these?” Rose asked.  
  
The Doctor grinned. “Because we’re going scuba diving, but with these as the scubas. I was hoping there would be some around here; I saw them when I was underwater earlier, not too far out. Kataa Flo Ko has some beautiful diamond coral reefs. You’re going to love them. They’re literally made of diamonds! Look out there, see?” he pointed further out in the water. “See how the water is lighter over there? There’s a reef right under there.”  
  
After being asked where his breather was, the Doctor said that he only had two and then had to explain that his respiratory bypass made it possible for him to stay underwater for several minutes without air. Martha found this medically fascinating and questioned him about it. Rose, meanwhile, bobbed up and down in the water, testing the breather, and found for the most part that she could breathe as easily beneath the surface as above. Finally, the Doctor sighed impatiently and reminded the medical student that they were wasting daylight with questions that could be asked later.  
  
Rose and Martha found it difficult to keep up with the Doctor on the swim out to the reefs, enough that he finally circled back and grabbed their hands to tow them. It was strange feeling, breathing underwater, since it’s been ingrained in her for as long as she could remember to not inhale water. She caught herself holding her breath several times and had to remind herself that, yes, she could inhale and nothing bad would happen.  
  
It was like nothing they’d ever seen before. The water at the shallowest part of the reef was about ten feet deep and stretching from the bottom to about four feet below the surface for about a dozen yards out to sea, was a huge, layered diamond coral reef. They very much resembled an Earth coral reef, except for the whole made of white diamond thing, from flat mushroom-like bits, to pieces that looked like little trees, and there were even some of the squiggly ones that always had reminded Rose of brains. The sunlight reflected off the pristine surfaces and threw rainbows towards the surface.  
  
The Doctor let go of their hands so they could dive down deeper while he popped to the surface for air.  
  
Rose floated about a foot above the highest point of the coral reef, lighting kicking her feet to keep herself from sinking any further, and peered at the crystalline coral. She reached out and rubbed the surface with the pads of her fingers. It was slippery and smooth but not slimy, and she tapped on it to affirm that it was hard like an Earth diamond. She arched her back, flipping herself over, and swam down further into the reef.  
  
She spotted Martha trying to use the lesser buoyancy to her advantage so she could stand on a more flat area. She looked up at Rose and widened her eyes, lips pressed together behind the mask as if to say, “I’m going to get this.” Rose found a branch of coral that seemed sturdy enough and held on to it so she could watch. By pushing upward with her arms, Martha managed to keep her feet on the surface for a few seconds, but then she always drifted upwards. Then a shadow appeared over her and the Doctor put his hand on her head, holding her down.  
  
Martha nearly jumped out of her skin, knocking the Doctor’s hand away. She looked up at him in alarm. He gave her a quick thumbs up and gestured towards the coral with his head. Martha nodded and pushed herself back down. The Doctor put his hand on her head again and she was standing on the diamond coral reef. Rose saw her grinning through the mask. She lifted her foot and took a step forward, then another. The Doctor kicked his feet so he could follow her.  
  
Her foot slipped and the other followed and she ended up floating back-first towards the surface. The Doctor got out of her away and watched her rise with her arms folded and a grumpy expression on her face. He laughed, the sound muffled and faint through the water, with bubbles bursting from his mouth. Rose giggled.  
  
He had to surface again but then he joined Rose down at the branch she was hanging from. Not for the first time today, her eyes roamed up and down his body. It was not often she saw him in less than his trousers and at least a t-shirt and she was not one to let such opportunities pass unappreciated. Besides, he was looking too and she knew it.  
  
The Doctor held out his hand, wiggling his fingers invitingly. She shook her head and kicked upwards, weaving through two large tree-like corals and through a round tunnel. She glanced back to make sure he was following her, winked once, then took off. Rose dove down through the levels, twisting and turning, slipping through tiny tunnels and propelling herself up and over the larger of the flat areas. Sometimes she’d pause to catch her breath, hiding behind stalks of coral, on a level or two below him, or on a layer above him.  
  
She knew he was letting her keep ahead, purposefully not looking too hard (at least not right away, though she always gave him an opportunity to glimpse her when she emerged from her hiding space) but it only added a bit of suspense to the fun and left her wondering when he’d stop letting her get away from him.  
  
Rose made sure she didn’t wander too far out to sea, or too far down into the reef itself. She didn’t want to get lost or make Martha worry, and plus she wasn’t quite sure what was down there with them. The sunlight shown down and the reefs gleamed brilliantly, but there were still shadows, areas thick with darkness that could be hiding anything. So far most of the life forms seemed to be avoiding them or had been docile, but where there were gentle things there were also those that were not, and she didn’t fancy finding out what the Kataa Flo Ko version of a shark was.  
  
She nearly swam right into Martha, yelping out an apology that she wasn’t sure if she even understood, then dove down another few levels and grabbed onto a branch to hold herself in place and catch her breath. Martha stared down at her, then looked the way she’d come. A moment later the Doctor appeared. He paused next to Martha, turning this way and that, then he looked at Martha for help. Martha shook her head and pointed downwards. The Doctor followed her finger and Rose shot off again.  
  
Martha watched them go, feeling smug like someone who’d been watching her friends pine after each other for years and finally got them to notice each other. She’d known from the moment the Doctor told them where they’d landed that he’d done it for Rose (not that him doing things for Rose was anything new) but the timing of this trip was no coincidence. Of all the places he could’ve taken them after the conversation she’d had with him earlier, he’d chosen a beautiful beach on a beautiful planet.  
  
Any excuse to get Rose in a swimsuit.  
  
Rose whizzed upwards about five yards to the right and the Doctor followed seconds behind her. Martha thought that their game did seem like fun, but she was used to being a third wheel by now, so she left them to it. She’d ask later, and maybe they could turn it into a game of hide-and-seek.  
  
This little game had been going on for at least ten minutes by now and Rose was beginning to wonder when he’d get tired of letting her slip past him. She’d been expecting him to catch her, but it still came as a surprise when she felt a hand seize her bicep. She jerked, startled, and turned her head. The Doctor was floating right beside her. He pulled her to him, locking his arms around her waist, her back pressed to his front, and propelled them to the surface. She felt a bit of sadness at their game having ended, but she was tired and she wanted to get that mask off her face and have a breath of fresh air.  
  
When they broke the surface, she tried to reach up and pull her mask off but his arms were still firmly around her.  
  
He kissed her cheek, murmuring slightly breathless into her ear, “Got you.”  
  



	25. Constellations

An hour, three very good games of hide-and-seek with Martha, and several encounters with marine life later, the three time travellers tramped through the shallows, exhausted from playing among the reefs. They pulled their goggles and masks off, wiggling their mouths and scrunching their noses.  
  
Even the Doctor seemed to be worn out and that was saying something. Granted he had spent a good amount of time searching the reef for his companions who’d both honed their skills at wandering off to elude him. Still, he at least had enough dignity and strength left to not flop down on the blankets like they did. He shook the water out of his hair, ignoring Martha’s mutters about no puppies allowed on the TARDIS, and dropped down next to Rose.  
  
“So, what did you think?” he asked them, grinning.  
  
Rose paused, lowering the towel from her hair. “Do you even have to ask?”   
  
“Well, sometimes it’s nice to hear something even if you already know the answer.” Martha said pointedly as she dried her arms with the towel. The Doctor suddenly found the blanket very fascinating and Rose went back to squeezing the water out of her hair. Martha smashed her lips together to stop herself from laughing at them.  
  
As the sun started to set, they pulled on clothes over their suits and got to work making dinner. A fire pit was dug, the portable campfire kit was unpacked and lit, and food was pulled from the cooler to be cooked. It’d been Martha’s idea to have dinner on the beach so it’d been up to her to decide what they’d be eating.   
  
Watching her pull supplies from the bag, they tried to discern exactly what she was planning on making. She unfolded a grate from the portable campfire kit and set it over the fire. Then she pulled out several sealed bags containing one ingredient each: chicken, mushrooms, tomatoes, and potatoes. She sat with her legs crossed, a small cutting board on her lap, and the bags in the sand along the front of her legs. Last, she pulled a handful of skewers from the bag. Brushing her hands off on her lap, she pulled the bags open and started sticking pieces from each onto a skewer.  
  
Rose had absolutely no idea what she was making. She and Jackie hadn’t had the money to go out to dinner often and her mum hadn’t ever made anything resembling that. The only thing that came to mind was s’mores but that definitely was not what was on the menu.   
  
The Doctor watched, captivated, his eyes tracking each slice of food from its bag to the skewer. Martha kept glancing up at him, a smile tugging at her lips, and Rose was chuckling quietly.  
  
“Doctor, are you alright?” Martha lightly jabbed the half loaded stick towards his face. He didn’t even flinch.  
  
“I’ve never had a shish kabob before,” he explained, watching her skewer another piece of chicken. “I’ve heard of them, but I’ve never actually gotten around to trying one.”  
  
“Never?” she asked in surprise. “I would’ve figured by now you’ve had everything there is to eat on Earth.”  
  
“Nah, that’ll never happen. Every day new recipes are being invented and forgotten. There’s no way I could ever keep up. Besides, plenty of places I can go to eat in the universe.”  
  
“Well, first time for everything.” Martha said, handing him the first one. “No! It’s still raw. Put it on the grill.” She nodded to the metal grate over the fire and picked up another stick.  
  
He lowered it from his mouth and gingerly set it on the grill.   
  
“I’ve never had them before, either.” Rose admitted.   
  
Martha nodded. “You I can understand. Don’t worry; I think you’ll like it.”  
  
After she placed three more on the grill, Martha rotated the first one, showing them how one side was nice and brown. She left them with the task of minding the grill while she continued to prepare the rest. As she’d predicted, the Doctor was able to adequately judge when the kabobs were done and he removed them from the grill, placing them on the plate Rose held. Though she half expected him to try to sneak one early or fidget impatiently, he was always on the move and in a hurry, the Doctor seemed content to simply let time pass and enjoy it.  
  
She was glad. The rhythmic rolling of the waves, the chirping of nighttime insects that were starting to come out, the crackling of the campfire, and the nearly inaudible hum of the TARDIS behind them. She was more relaxed right then, sitting on an alien beach with two of her best friends in the universe, sliding pieces of meat and vegetables onto the skewers, than she had been in weeks. It would’ve been even better if she hadn’t felt like a third wheel all day, but that was unavoidable with them, and she didn’t mind much these days. She was getting an experience that few others ever would and if she had to feel like the odd one out and excuse herself to let them be alone sometimes, well, she’d do it.   
  
And there was something satisfying about watching the two of them grow closer together and knowing she’d helped. Martha, if nothing else, was practical. She knew that this life–the travelling and running–wasn’t permanent. Soon she’d have to go back to Earth. 2008, May. She had a life there that she couldn’t just drop. Maybe once she finished med school she’d go back to travelling with them, but eventually she’d stop. Rose would stay with the Doctor and the two of them would keep on travelling. Maybe they’d come to visit–no, there was no maybe about it, they _would_ be coming to visit her–and maybe she’d go with them a few times, but she would be able to happily wave goodbye each time if she knew they were happy together.   
  
Feeling like a mother, she watched the two of them eat shish kabobs for the first time. Rose seemed unsure what to do at first, but then she held the point in one hand and the handle in the other and went about biting pieces off like corn on the cob. The Doctor tried different ways to pry the pieces off without poking himself or dropping them in the sand. Rose was laughing at his antics, his eyes kept flickering between her and his food, and Martha decided he was probably being silly just for her.  
  
Once more she was struck with a pang of regret. The Doctor had, without meaning to, ruined everyone else for her.   
  
The woman with silver hands had told her she’d meet her love in the “darkest time.” Whatever that was supposed to mean. She couldn’t help but wonder sometimes what he’d be like. A human, probably–she wished Rose nothing but the best, but she didn’t think she herself could honestly love anyone who wasn’t her own species. Even if he did look like one and could offer her the universe from start to finish. Would he be short or tall? Black, white, or something else–it didn’t matter to her, not really. He’d have to be intelligent and brave. She wasn’t expecting him to be able to look a Dalek in the eyestalk, but he would have to be able to accept the fact she was a time traveller and they would occasionally have a pandimensional ship landing in their front room. And he’d have to be willing to come with them to an alien planet. Or two.  
  
After dinner, the Doctor cleaned off the skewers and grate with the sonic and Rose helped Martha repack the supplies. Rose carried the bag over to the TARDIS, unlocking the door, and set it just inside the door. The TARDIS hummed, the touch in her mind warm, but brief. Shutting the door behind her, Rose fixed the knot on her long, sky blue sarong and slipped the key around her neck. She treaded carefully back across the sand to the blankets where the Doctor and Martha waited.   
  
The sand glimmered in the firelight, reminding her once more that it was made entirely of precious stones. This beach, she decided, was one of her favorite places in the universe.   
  
She sat down next to the Doctor, hip pressed against his, and curled her legs out to the side, leaning on him for support. Three of the four moons were well up into the sky by the time the last light of the distant blue star faded, leaving the sky inky black, peppered with the light of countless stars.   
  
The Doctor had kept one of the skewers and he used it as a pointer. Martha joined them on their blanket, resting her head against his shoulder, and followed the line of the thin metal pole as he explained the sky above him. They could see nebulas burning millions of miles away, nurseries as colorful as the planet they sat on, cradling baby stars, several of which would be visible from earth one day. He indicated which clusters of stars were galaxies and which ones looked like they were close but were actually light years apart. He indicated which lights were Kataa Flo Ko’s sisters–those were fairly easy to distinguish, as they each gave off light tinged with color. The nearest one was mostly green.   
  
He pointed to a small one, almost purple in color, and said, “That’s the Xtonic star I was telling you about earlier. It gives of galvanic radiation. Just one touch on your skin and you’d turn to dust.”  
  
He indicated several big balls of light and said they were, in fact, not galaxies or neighboring planets, but individual stars. Some were the size of the Earth’s solar system. One was bigger. Then he started tracing constellations that they named on the spot.   
  
“–and see that one there? That’s the tip of the tail.”  
  
Martha squinted for another few seconds. She’d never been good with constellations. “Yeah, I think so.”  
  
“What should we call it?”  
  
“Bob.”   
  
Martha and the Doctor looked over at Rose with their eyebrows raised. She stared up at the sky resolutely.   
  
“Bob,” she repeated.  
  
“You know,” the Doctor said slowly. “When humans started inhabiting other planets, it became a general rule that if the indigenous life had pre-existing constellations, they would be honored. But if the people there never bothered to name patterns in the sky, astronomers would do it, and they usually became official. So, technically, here and now, we’re deciding the official constellations for Kataa Flo Ko.”   
  
“Then Kataa Flo Ko has a constellation called Bob,” Rose said firmly.   
  
They stayed out there for a while longer, occasionally lapsing into silence. Rose felt tranquil, a far cry from how she’d felt this time yesterday. Tranquil, happy, safe, and with the Doctor’s fingers tracing patterns idly on her side, loved. She never wanted it to end.   
  
Eventually, though, Martha yawned. “Well, I’m going inside. It’s getting a bit to chilly out here for me. You guys gonna stay out here a bit longer?”  
  
The Doctor glanced down at Rose and they both nodded.   
  
Martha picked up her clothes from earlier and her towel, heading for the TARDIS. Calling over her shoulder, “Don’t you stay out too late!” she unlocked the door and stepped inside.   
  
The moment the door shut, Rose sighed, shifting closer to the Doctor. She felt him smile against her head. His skin was cool and the night air was little better, she couldn’t help but shiver even with the fire. She fisted her hands around the loose sleeves of her chemise, holding the fabric closer to her skin to block the breeze. The Doctor pulled away and returned a moment later with one of the smaller blankets that he wrapped around her shoulders.   
  
It was her turn to smile. “Thank you.” She fidgeted before he could put his arm around her again, her back was getting a bit stiff from sitting in the same position for so long, and she decided to stretch out on her back.   
  
The Doctor blinked once slowly, then joined her. Instead of putting his arm around her, he laced his fingers with hers, their clasped hands resting in the space between them. She smiled, closing her eyes contently.   
  
“This has been nice,” she said quietly. “How come we didn’t come sooner?”  
  
He shrugged. “There’re lots of places I’d like to take you. But places like this seem even nicer when you’re not visiting them every day. You’ve got to have variety. Besides, this way we’ve always got something to look forward to. Always one more place we can go.”  
  
“Hmm. All the same, I really loved today. Thank you.”  
  
“You don’t have to thank me.”  
  
“Well I’m gonna.”  
  
He smiled, looking at her properly now. Her cheeks were lit by the firelight but her eyes were cast in shadow and he could see the stars reflecting off the brown orbs. He turned onto his side, propping himself up on his arm and curling his other hand around hers at once.   
  
“I think I’m the one who should be thanking you,” he admitted quietly. Blinking, she turned her head towards his, and arched her eyebrows. “Because you stay. Every time I’m sure I’ve finally gone and done something that’ll make you leave, you don’t even flinch.”  
  
The corners of her lips turned upwards. “I don’t want to.”  
  
He lifted their joined hands, brushing his knuckles across her cheek. “Even if this is all I can give you?”   
  
Her eyes closed at his touch. “It’s enough,” she whispered.  
  
“Is it? Is it really?” he pressed. “You’re young, Rose. You might be happy now, but what about in five years? There are things I can never give you. Things you might want one day.”  
  
Rose snapped her eyes open and glared at him fiercely. “Don’t you dare. This has been one of the nicest days I’ve had in ages. Don’t spoil it.”  
  
“Rose.”  
  
“Doctor.”  
  
“Please.”  
  
She sighed. “I told you before: I’m never gonna leave you. I thought you’d have gotten that through your head by now. I want this life, here, with you.”  
  
“And what about a house, a job, children, and things like that?”  
  
“Doctor, I don’t care about any of that. I don’t want that life.”  
  
“You could, one day.”  
  
“Yeah and I’m also old enough to decide what I want for myself, thanks.” she replied tersely. “I don’t need you or anyone telling me what I need or don’t need in my life. And I say for now, this–” she held up their joined hands “–is enough.”  
  
He smiled at her, his eyes proud and yet resigned, like he’d expected this answer all along. He squeezed her hand tighter.  
  
“You’re such an idiot sometimes,” she told him, then she and scooted closer. “But you’re my idiot.”  
  
The Doctor chuckled, brushing her cheek again, but quickly sobered. “I meant it, though.”  
  
“So did I.”  
  
“No, before that. _Thank you._ And I…I’m sorry for yesterday. I was worried about you the whole time I was with them.”  
  
Her eyes flitted downwards, studying the blanket covering her arm. “Half the time I was sure you’d turn up any second, the other half, all I could think about was finding your dead body.”  
  
A tremor ran through her body and he felt a tear land on his hand. He immediately let go of her hand and put his arm around her waist, pulling her against him. She rolled onto her side and pressed her face into his t-shirt, fisting her hands in the material and she shuddered. Her voice was muffled but he understood every word she said. “The way you kissed me–I thought you were telling me goodbye. I thought you knew they were gonna kill you and I wouldn’t have been able to save you this time.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “It was the only way. There wasn’t time to–”  
  
“I know.” She lifted her head. “Just…shut up for a bit.”  
  
He closed his mouth obediently and spent the next few minutes tracing words in Gallifreyan on her back. He wondered if she’d noticed yet that he always wrote the same thing, over and over, every time he did this. When they were curled up in bed as he tried to help her fall asleep, after she was asleep, when they were lounging together on the couch. He didn’t expect her to know what it meant, just that he’d been telling her for months. He’d even written it near the bottom of her door one night when he was bored and waiting for her sleep cycle to be over. The words he wanted to say to her.  
  
He could smile when others said it, he could think it, he could admit it to Martha, but saying it to Rose herself was another matter entirely. But she knew. She had to.  
  
The Doctor lifted his eyes to the stars and almost smiled when he found a specific cluster again. Their shape was unclear from this part of space and incomplete, but he knew them just as he always did. He’d noticed them earlier but he hadn’t wanted to explain so he hadn’t called attention to them then. He wanted to show her now. He wanted someone other than him to look up at the sky and know, if only for a few minutes, the importance of that ravaged bit of space.  
  
“Rose, I want to show you something.”  
  
He sat up and reached for the skewer, which lay forgotten above the blanket, and pointed it at the cluster. “That cluster I’m pointing to–bit difficult to see since we’re so far. Looks like a wonky five-point. Do you see it?”   
  
She sat up and squinted, trying to locate the cluster among the dozens of stars in the area he was pointing out. Finally she nodded.  
  
“That’s what’s left of the constellation of Kasterborous,” he told her softly. “It used to also be known as the Seven Systems.”  
  
Her question was soft, gentle, “What happened?”  
  
“The Time War happened.” He paused and slid his arm around her back. “There were five planets, two suns, and about a dozen moons, but when the war was time locked, most of what was left got trapped inside. And since effects of the war ripple across time itself, the system will never look as it should. I went back once; right around the time I met you, just to see if I could find out what had survived. But the TARDIS couldn’t get any proper readings and we couldn’t get any closer without risking the lock.”  
  
“Why’d you even go back?”  
  
He hesitated again, swallowed, and murmured, “It’s where I’m from.”  
  
Rose’s eyes widened and she inhaled sharply. She studied the weird little constellation with new intensity. With this knowledge in mind she realized that it looked rather…alone. There was ring of darkness around those few lights that no other light quite breached. Those five little lights, the last remains of what must’ve been a mighty syste, broken and alone in the dark with only each other for company. Much like the man beside her back when they’d first met.  
  
“G-Gallifrey?” she whispered.   
  
“I’m not even sure exactly what those five are since I can’t risk getting close.” the Doctor went on quickly. “Though, I’m pretty sure at least one of the suns made it or else we wouldn’t be able to see them at all. But as for the rest, no one knows. No one will ever know.”  
  
There were so many things she could say, but none of them seemed appropriate. _I’m sorry_ just wouldn’t do, not for that. So she opted not to say anything, reaching for his cheek and turning his face towards hers. His eyes met hers, so dark and sad, that she didn’t hesitate, stretching up to press her lips tenderly against his. He wavered for only a moment, then his arm was tightening around her as he kissed her back.   
  
It wasn’t like any kiss they had shared before. Usually they were brushes on cheeks and foreheads, occasionally pecks on the lips and sometimes not as chaste, plus yesterday’s brief, but fierce kiss in Hooverville. But this one was slow and tender, full of unspoken words, sorrow, and love. He dropped the skewer and curled his hand around the nape of her neck, pulling her closer and deepening the kiss. She made a tiny sound in the back of her throat and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. She caressed the back of his head with one hand, running her fingers through his hair.  
  
When her lungs felt like they would burst if she didn’t breathe, Rose drew back. The Doctor placed a few more kisses to her lips, slowing them each time, then opened his eyes, just a few inches from hers. He smiled a bit and rubbed her cheekbone with his thumb.  
  
 _I love you_ , she thought.   
  
“Thank you,” she said. “For showing me.”   
  
\--  
  
A scream startled Rose out of her sleep the next morning and she jerked awake with a gasp. The first thing she realized was that she was still outside. The second was that she was using the Doctor’s chest as a pillow. And third: there was a very strange clicking noise right above her. She looked up, catching the Doctor’s eye, and then the both of them looked at the creatures standing over them.  
  
There were three of them. Rusty-brown crabs the size of giant dogs, with four black eyes, oversized mouths, four pincers, and over half a dozen legs. They stared down at the two humanoids on the blankets. Their mouths opened and closed, revealing four rows of teeth, and clicked their pincers at them.  
  
Rose stared at them for a second and then she let out a shrill scream. She leaped off the blanket, reaching for the cooler with the chicken legs in it, ripping the lid off, and she chucked the entire thing at them. She didn’t wait to see if it hit, floundering through the said towards the TARDIS. Martha was standing in the doorway watching the scene in horror. She only just managed to jump out of the way as Rose barreled through.  
  
Throwing the entire cooler, as it turned out, wasn’t exactly an effective method. Thankfully the Doctor wasn’t as alarmed by their appearance. After Rose threw the cooler he was able to actually get the chicken legs out and started pelting the crabs with them. When they got far enough away, he made a grab for his sonic screwdriver and chased them up the beach with the right setting. When he got back to their campsite, Rose and Martha were peeking out from behind the TARDIS doors.   
  
He shook his head at them. “You can come out now. Honestly, they won’t be back anytime soon.”  
  
After a moment, they slowly emerged from the TARDIS, Martha checking around the back of the ship for any sign of more crabs. When she was satisfied they were alone again, she joined the two of them by the extinguished campfire.  
  
“I’ve been looking all over for you two,” she said. “The kitchen, the library, both your rooms. I didn’t think you’d stay out all night.”  
  
“Didn’t mean to,” the Doctor admitted. His sleep cycle had been interrupted earlier and after their day, he’d been completely knackered. So when Rose fell asleep in his arms, he didn’t really have the heart to move her, and ended up dozing off with her. Though waking up with her on his chest had been quite a pleasant surprise.   
  
Martha looked between the two of them contemplatively then shrugged.   
  
The Doctor was eager to move on after a day of sitting still, relatively speaking, so they packed up camp and went on their way, after securing a promise from the Doctor that they would come back one day.  
  
After that, life in the TARDIS went on the way it always did. Well mostly.   
  
They still gallivanted around, stirring up trouble, taking in the wonders of the universe, and occasionally saving people. They pretended to be nobility when it suited them and laid low when it didn’t. They visited theme parks, went back to the holo-film theater, went to a restaurant in New York City and ate pork. They sat in the door of the TARDIS and hovered over nebulae and planets. They played with random coordinates.   
  
Martha finally got her curling iron and hairdryer from the 80th century. She also received her TARDIS key around the same time, the Doctor exclaiming that he couldn’t believe he’d forgotten to give her one sooner, after all he’d thought to upgrade her phone weeks ago. She wore the key around her neck proudly. She even made her first call home since departing, speaking to her mum and Tish briefly. She figured it was best they didn’t speak for long after Tish mentioned that it had only been a day since the whole incident with Lazarus.  
  
But she’d noticed a few changes in the weeks following their vacation on Kataa Flo Ko. The Doctor and Rose had already been acting like a couple long before she’d come onboard the TARDIS, so the fact that the dynamics in the ship had shifted somewhat wasn’t glaringly obvious. But sometimes their playful banter was punctuated by kisses. Sometimes she’d find them curled up somewhere and Rose would be massaging his temples or playing with his hair, or vice versa. And sometimes she’d be looking for one or both of them and couldn’t seem to find them.   
  
The Doctor took them to the year 2011 and they went to the Harry Potter theme park in Florida. There would be dozens of Harry Potter themed parks and funlands over the next few centuries, better than this, but he insisted that this small section of the larger theme park would always have a certain charm that none of the others did, simply because it was the first.   
  
They went everywhere at least twice. While they were in the queue for the castle ride, the Doctor pulled _The Philosopher’s Stone_ out of his coat and read aloud in the way only he could to entertain them. He earned the attention of everyone nearby and the usual chatter died down so they could hear him talking over the hum of the ride and the talking pictures. When they got to the front, there were a few empty cars sent along as even the attendants wanted to hear for just a few more seconds.   
  
After the ride, they rooted around the shop. Rose bought a Fawkes plushy, Martha got Crookshanks, and the Doctor got Hedwig. They went into Zonkos and Honeydukes, they had lunch at The Three Broomsticks, went to Ollivander’s to watch the wand selecting ceremony (the Doctor spent their time in the queue reading from _The Philosopher’s Stone_ again), and next door to Dervish and Bangles where they each bought a house scarf–Ravenclaw for the Doctor, Gryffindor for Rose, and Hufflepuff for Martha. Then they jumped ahead a few weeks and went to the midnight premier of the final movie.   
  
Martha and Rose collaborated with the TARDIS one time when the Doctor was actually asleep, using what little piloting skills she had, and got her to take them to 2009 so Martha could finally see the latest Terminator movie. She went on her own and came back a few hours later having seen and been disappointed in the movie. They returned the TARDIS to the vortex with the Doctor completely unaware the trip ever occurred.  
  
They went to visit Sarah Jane in 2008 and introduce her to Martha. The medical student was delighted to finally meet her. After scolding the Doctor for landing in the middle of her living room, Sarah Jane seemed equally pleased to have them and greeted Martha warmly. Her delight only increased further when Martha mentioned she’d heard a lot about her from the Doctor and Rose.  
  
She invited them to stay for lunch and the three of them offered to help prepare sandwiches in the kitchen. As she was getting the bread out of the fridge, she gave them a shrewd look. “I don’t suppose you know anything about Christmas. The spaceship and the Thames being drained?”  
  
Rose snickered and the Doctor plastered on an innocent expression. “Maybe.”  
  
She elbowed him but his innocent smile did not falter. She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, we were there. It’s a long story. An’ before you ask, we were in the hospital, too.”  
  
Sarah Jane raised her eyebrows. “What hospital?”  
  
“Royal Hope,” Martha explained. “That’s how the three of us met. I was working there and they were investigating when it got taken up to the moon.”  
  
“A hospital’s going to get taken to the moon?” she asked sharply.  
  
“Yeah, didn’t you–uh oh. What date is it?”  
  
“March 2nd, 2008.”  
  
As one, the girls turned to glare at the Doctor. He ignored them, sipping casually at his tea.  
  
Sarah Jane sighed. “What date was he aiming for?”  
  
“May or June.”   
  
“Not as bad as it could have been, then.”  
  
So they explained what they could about Royal Hope and warned Sarah Jane to stay away that day. Then they started telling her what they’d been up to over the past four months. As they spoke, Sarah Jane listened but she also took note of the way they were seated. Martha sat next to Rose, straight up in her chair, with her arms folded on the table. Rose and the Doctor’s chairs were as close together as possible and based on the positions of their arms, she guessed they were holding hands under the table. Last time she’d seen them together, Rose had been by the Doctor’s side almost constantly but to her it had looked like it was mostly for support. Like she would fall over without him there to hold her up.  
  
Now they sat close together, holding hands, smiling and laughing and finishing each other’s sentences as they told a story. Sarah Jane took a sip of her tea and caught Martha’s eye briefly, lifting one eyebrow. The younger woman nodded once, accompanied by a roll of her eyes and a fond smile. So their relationship was progressing nicely, then. There was comfort in seeing that. She would never have to worry about Rose turning up on her door for help. Well, not again, anyway.


	26. Heat

  
Martha was in the movies section of the library, sprawled out on a very puffy leather couch couch watching Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The Doctor planned to continue their theme park jaunts with a trip to a park based off the trilogy. It was about ten in the morning relative time and she was only about thirty minutes into it when the peacefulness of the TARDIS was suddenly interrupted.  
  
The ship gave a violent shudder, an alarm blaring through the halls. Martha was thrown clear off the couch and all around her she heard the thudding of dozens of books and films hitting the floor. She pushed herself up once the shaking stopped and hurried to the console room. She heard the Doctor call their names and wondered not for the first time if the ship had a hidden PA system. The TARDIS had the decency to make it a quick trip to the console room and she met up with Rose just outside the door.  
  
“Come on!” the Doctor, dressed in his blue suit, shouted from the ramp. “We locked on to a distress signal!”  
  
He pulled open the door and stepped out. A second later they heard him say, “Whoa! Now that is hot!”   
  
The emerged behind him and the moment they stepped out of the console room they were hit with a blast of hot air. They were in some sort of cramped service room, from the looks of it, surrounded by metal. There were machines and piping everywhere and steam wafted up from the floor. The whole place was tinged various shades of orange, as if illuminated by a bonfire, and smelt strongly of sulfur.   
  
Martha gasped, pulling off her sweater, and tossed it back into the TARDIS. “It’s like a sauna in here.” She was immensely glad that they’d planned to go to a warm planet today, because she’d chosen to wear a tank top and a pair of shorts.   
  
Rose, however, had been in the wardrobe to pass the time when they’d locked on to the emergency beacon, and had on jeans and long-sleeved peasant blouse. She immediately pulled her sleeves up to her elbows and tucked her hair behind her ears. “Where are we?”  
  
“No idea,” he said, leaning down to inspect one of the machines. “But these are venting systems. Working at full pelt, trying to cool down, uh, wherever it is we are.” He straightened up and looked around the room for an exit. “Well, if you can’t stand the heat.”   
  
Rose and Martha followed him over to the door. He pushed it open and stuck his head out experimentally then motioned that it was safe for them to follow. They stepped over the threshold and looked at the hallway stretching out before them, divided into smaller sections by doorways shaped similarly to the one they’d just stepped through.   
  
“Oi, you three!” a man shouted as three people leaped through the nearest opening and came barreling towards them.   
  
“GET OUT OF THERE!” the woman leading the group commanded.  
  
“Seal that door now!” The two men pushed past and shut the door, sealing it quickly, and the woman stopped in front of them.  
  
She was taller than both girls, wearing a black sleeveless shirt and workpants, and her brown hair stuck to her sweaty skin. “Who are you?” she demanded. “What are you doing on my ship?”  
  
“Are you police?” the younger man asked.  
  
The Doctor looked at the woman in confusion. “Why would be police?”  
  
“We got your distress signal,” Martha explained.   
  
“If this is a ship why can’t hear any engines?”  
  
“It went dead four minutes ago,” the woman said.   
  
“So maybe we should stop chatting and get to engineering,” he snapped then added, “Captain.”  
  
The captain took a deep breath and as she exhaled, a klaxon began to blare and a computerized voice announced, _“Secure Closure Active.”_  
  
“What?” the captain exclaimed.  
  
“The ship’s gone mad.”  
  
A shorthaired young woman, not much older than Rose herself, came running down the hallway, leaping through the doorways with a helmet and thick gloves in her arms. “Who activated secure closure?” she demanded. “I nearly to locked into area 27!”  
  
Behind her, the door reading Area 30 slammed shut. She ignored it, looking the trio up and down. “Who are you?”   
  
“He’s the Doctor, she’s Rose, and I’m Martha. Hello,” she said, sounding dazed. Rose glanced at her in concern. Martha moved past them almost mechanically towards a porthole where more orange light was streaming in.   
  
Rose felt sweat starting to build up on her forehead and she reached up to wipe it off with the back of her hand. Above them the computer droned, “Impact projection: 42 minutes.”  
  
She froze with her hand on her forehead. Beside her, she felt the Doctor stiffen.   
  
The captain swallowed. “We’ll get out of this, I promise.”   
  
“Doctor,” Martha said slowly.  
  
“Forty-two minutes until what?” the Doctor asked.  
  
Martha walked right up to the window, placing her hands on the ledge and peered out, just to confirm what she was actually seeing. “Doctor! Look!”  
  
Rose and the Doctor darted past the captain and joined Marta at the window. The three of them looked out into the light. Before them, burning brightly in the darkness of space, the surface churning and swirling violently was a fiery yellow sun. A star that grew bigger with each passing moment as the ship hurtled towards it. In forty-two minutes the ship would hit it and then they would all die.   
  
In her mind, the TARDIS hummed nervously. The _TARDIS_ was _nervous_! The Doctor darted away from the window but Rose continued to stare, completely captivated. The way it moved and seemed to radiate menace, it was like the star was… _alive_. Seconds after this occurred to her, Rose felt something knock against her mind. Hot, aggressive, like it was trying to force its way in. She backed away with a gasp, wrenching her eyes away from the sun. She rubbed them furiously and shook her head.   
  
The forceful knocking continued and she heard at the edge of her mind, faint but full of rage and agony: _**BURN WITH ME.**  
  
GET OUT!_ She screamed in her mind and the TARDIS’s nervous hum turned possessive. The voice fell silent and the knocking tapered off.   
  
She was brought back to reality by the Doctor’s pained shout. She whipped around in time to see him go flying back from the door that led to the TARDIS. She shouted his name and flew over to his side. She helped him sit up, curling her hand around his arm. The young woman leaped around them shut the door to the venting chambers, locking it firmly.  
  
“But my ship’s in there!” the Doctor protested.  
  
“In the vent chamber?” the younger man asked in disbelief.  
  
The Doctor pushed himself to his feet, pulling Rose up along with him, and rounded on the crew. “It’s our lifeboat.”  
  
“It’s lava,” the older man said.   
  
The young spoke up from by the thermostat. “The temperature’s going mad in there. Up three thousand degrees in ten seconds and still rising.”  
  
“Channeling the air,” the younger man explained. “The closer we get to the sun, the hotter that room’s going to get.”  
  
“What about the TARDIS?” Rose asked.  
  
The Doctor sighed. “She’s got shields. Not that they’ll do much good if we hit the sun. We need to fix the engines then we can steer the ship away. Simple.”  
  
The members of the crew looked surprised, like this idea hadn’t occurred to them. The lot of them followed the Doctor down the nearby stairs to the engine room. Ducking under a few lines of thick pipes, they entered a long room full of machines and mechanisms, piping, switches, and miles worth of wiring. The Doctor exclaimed in surprise when he saw the state of the main engines. And while Rose didn’t have much knowledge about mechanics even she could tell that the engines were wrecked. It looked like someone had completely gutted them, ripped out wires and springs, bashed parts in.  
  
“Someone knew what they were doing,” the Doctor growled.  
  
The captain looked around. “Where’s Korwin? Has anyone heard from him or Ashton?”  
  
“No,” said the older man.   
  
The Doctor put on his glasses and wandered it over to a computer terminal and started pressing buttons.   
  
“Do you mean someone did this on purpose?” Martha asked coming up behind him. He nodded grimly without looking up.   
  
_Fantastic. Just bloody fantastic_. Rose put one hand on her hip and wiped her forehead with the other one. That meant sabotage. Sabotage meant there was at least one hostile onboard. As if they didn’t already have enough trouble. Trapped on a ship en route with the sun with a person onboard who wanted to make sure they couldn’t escape. Definitely what she’d planned to do today.   
  
She watched the Doctor fiddling around with the screen while the captain shouted into the intercom. He glanced up at Rose once and she smiled half-heartedly. The crew rushed through the room, some of them looking for the missing members, others holding up bits of the ruined machinery in disgust and despair.  
  
“Oh!” the Doctor exclaimed suddenly. “We’re in the Torajji system! Lovely! You’re a long way from home,” he told his companions. “Half a universe away.”  
  
“Yeah, feels it.” Martha said sarcastically.  
  
He ignored her and rounded on the captain. “And you’re still using energy scoops for fusion. Hasn’t that been outlawed yet?”  
  
The captain and the younger man, who was descending the stairs with a coil looped around his shoulder, glanced at each other guiltily.   
  
She squared her shoulders. “We’re due to upgrade next docking. Scannell, engine report.”  
  
The older man walked around to the terminal and sniffed then started fiddling with the controls. The computer beeped a few times. “No response,” he said after a moment. He left the computer and went to check some of the wiring.  
  
“What?” the captain demanded and took Scannell’s place in front of the terminal to check the results herself.  
  
“They’re burnt out.” Scannel tossed down some of the wiring in disgust. “The controls are wrecked. I can’t get them back online.”  
  
“Oh, come on,” the Doctor chastised, pulling his glasses off. “Auxiliary engines. Every craft’s got auxiliaries.”  
  
The captain shook her head. “We don’t have access from here. The auxiliary controls are in the front of the ship.”  
  
“Yeah, with twenty-nine password-sealed doors between us and them,” Scannell added. “You’ll never get there in time.”  
  
“So just override them.” Rose suggested.  
  
“No, ‘sealed closure’ means what it says. They’re all deadlock-sealed.”  
  
“Of course they are.”   
  
“So a sonic screwdriver’s no use,” the Doctor muttered.  
  
Scannell overheard him and threw his hands up. “Nothing’s any use. We’ve got no engines, no time, and no chance!”  
  
“Oh, listen to you! Defeated before you’ve even started! Where’s your Dunkirk spirit?!” The Doctor turned to the captain. He was beginning to exude the power he always did when he decided the locals couldn’t handle things on their own. He stood straighter, his eyes were just a bit darker, and he spoke with authority that usually made people jump at his orders. “Who’s got the door passwords?”  
  
The younger man spoke up then. “They’re randomly generated. Reckon I know most of ‘em. Sorry.” He waved. “Riley Vashti.”  
  
“What are you waiting for, Riley Vashti? Get on it.”  
  
“Well, it’s a two-person job–” he reached up behind them and pulled down a pack “–one to take this for the questions, the other to carry this.” He pulled down a large clamp and slung the pack over his shoulder. “The oldest and cheapest security system around, eh, captain?”  
  
“Reliable and simple, just like you, eh, Riley?” she countered.  
  
“Try to be helpful, get abuse. Nice.”   
  
“I’ll help you.” Martha reached for the clamp. “Make myself useful.”  
  
“It’s remotely controlled by the computer panel, that’s why it needs two.” Riley explained. He headed towards the stairs and Martha started to follow.  
  
“Oi,” the Doctor called seriously. Martha turned. “You be careful.”  
  
She smiled. “You too. Both of you.”  
  
 _“McDonnell, it’s Ashton.”_   
  
The captain, McDonnell, turned around sharply and went to the intercom. “Where are you?” she demanded into it. “Is Korwin with you?”  
  
 _“Get up to the medcentre now!”_ McDonnell glanced up at the crew then ran for the stairs.   
  
The Doctor followed her and Rose started to go with them, but he shouted at her to stay there. She stopped mid-step and sighed, folding her arms. Right, like she’d be any use down here. No idea what century they were in and no idea what to do with the mess around her. She turned around and smiled awkwardly at the two remaining members of the crew.  
  
“So, um, anything I can do to help?”  
  
“That depends,” the young woman said. “Can you actually do anything? ‘Cos you haven’t been very useful so far.”  
  
“Sorry, what’s your name?”  
  
“Erina.”   
  
“Right, Erina. I’m Rose. I don’t really know much about engines myself, but I used to date a mechanic and I’ve been watching the Doctor do repair work on our ship for years. I’m a quick learner. So tell me what I can do to help.”  
  
Scannell nodded. “Start picking things up. Anything that looks repairable, give to me. If it’s fried, toss it over there.” He pointed at a small pile of rubbish.   
  
Rose exhaled, “Right. Okay. She pulled the sleeves of her shirt up higher and wiped her brow again.   
  
She started picking through the bits of mangled machinery. Anything that looked burnt or snapped she tossed into the pile. For every three she discarded there was at least one thing she found that she thought could be saved. Most of them were. It would’ve been a lot easier to focus if it wasn’t getting so _hot_ in there. The Doctor and McDonnell returned a few minutes later with another man who introduced himself as Ashton. The two members of the crew immediately went to work repairing the engine.   
  
The Doctor crouched down next to her and murmured so the rest of the crew wouldn’t hear. “Are you feeling alright?” he asked.   
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“The TARDIS is resilient, but even she has her limits. You told me you can feel what she does sometimes.”  
  
“There’s nothing from her now. Well, she’s nervous, but you feel that too, right?”  
  
He nodded. “Anything else?”  
  
“Earlier, I felt poundin’–” she jabbed her finger at her temple. “–like somethin’ was tryin’ to get in. It was…angry…and it…I heard it say _‘burn with me.’_ ”  
  
The Doctor’s jaw twitched and there was a dangerous look in his eyes. “And how do you feel now? You don’t feel like you’re burning, do you?”  
  
“No, but I am pretty hot.”  
  
He reached out felt her forehead with the back of his hand, then he checked her pulse. “You’re slightly warmer than you should be given the current room temperature, but that could be for any number of reasons. You’re nowhere near as hot as Korwin was, though, so that’s good. Can you hear it anymore?”  
  
She shook her head.  
  
“Okay. Let me know if you start getting so hot it hurts.”  
  
“I will. Do you have any scissors?”  
  
He started digging around his pockets. “I should. Why?”  
  
“Because I can’t deal with long sleeves right now.”  
  
“Oh. Good idea.”   
  
He pulled a pair of scissors from his jacket pocket and she quickly snipped off the sleeves of her shirt. She noticed the change almost immediately. The material hadn’t been too thick but it still felt like she’d shucked a jacket and there was a definite breeze under there. She smiled in thanks. He kissed her forehead then stood up, walking to the intercom. He spoke into it, asking someone named Abi about how Korwin was doing.   
  
_“He’s under heavy sedation,”_ a female voice replied. _“I’m just trying to make sense of this data. Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll let you know.”_  
  
The Doctor made a quick circuit of the room, checking on everyone’s progress, then returned to the intercom and called up to Martha. Leaving the line open so they could communicate, he went to help Scannell.   
  
Finished with sorting the bits and pieces she could find, Rose looked around for some other way to make herself useful. Erina recruited her to help lug a pair of thick cables from the back storage room. Then a toolbox. It was grunt work but if it helped avert their course then she didn’t care. Martha and the Doctor talked back and forth of the intercom about one of the passwords, something to do with numbers being happy, and the crew got to hear one of the Doctor’s infamous high-speed lectures, and all the while the computer issues routine warnings.   
  
_Heat shields failing. Collision imminent. Impact in 30:50._  
  
“We need a backup,” the Doctor was saying when she and Erina returned to the main engine room. “In case they don’t reach the auxiliary engines in time. Come on! Think!” he barked at the crew. “Resources, what have we got?  
  
Marta’s voice floated over the intercom again. _“Doctor?”_  
  
“What is it now?!”  
  
 _“Who had the most number ones, Elvis or the Beatles? That’s pre-downloads.”_  
  
The crew looked at each other in confusion. Rose was surprised–it had to be a long time in the future if they didn’t know who Elvis or the Beatles were.   
  
“Elvis,” the Doctor said. “No! The Beatles. No, wait! Um…um…Oooh–” he hit the back of his head furiously. “What’s that remix? Um…I don’t know. I am a bit busy!”  
  
“I think I’ve got a mate who might know it.” Rose spoke up. “Shareen loves music. She’s dated a few musicians, too.”   
  
“Call her up, then,” the Doctor ordered. “Now, where was I? ‘Here Comes the Sun.’ No, resources!”   
  
Rolling her eyes, Rose retreated up the stairs so she could call her friend without her overhearing the crew or the hissing of the engine room. She pulled her mobile out of her jeans and scrolled through her contacts, stepping through the junction to area twenty-eight. Luck was on their side, it seemed, because Shareen answered on the third ring.  
  
 _“Hey, Rose! Are you still in London? Have you seen the news? It’s been absolutely mad around here this week. First the hospital, then supposedly this old boffin turned into a dirty great–”_  
  
It was best to cut her off before she got going or they’d crash into the sun before she could get a word in edgewise. “Yeah, I saw. Listen, Ree, I don’t have long. I need a favor.”  
  
She arrived at the door where Martha and Riley waited anxiously. She pointed to her phone and smiled.   
  
_“What’s wrong?”_  
  
Rose swallowed. _I’m about to fly into a sun and die._ “Nothing, really, it’s just a bit of a trivia. Who had more number ones: Elvis or the Beatles?”   
  
_“Elvis,”_ Shareen replied immediately.   
  
“Elvis,” Rose repeated, “ta.”   
  
“Is she sure?” Riley demanded. “We’ve only got one shot. Otherwise the whole system freezes.”  
  
“Are you absolutely sure?”  
  
 _“‘Course I’m sure! C’mon, bit o’ faith.”_  
  
“Right. Thanks, Ree. You’re a lifesaver. I’ll talk to–”  
  
The intercom crackled to life and the voice of Abi the nurse echoed throughout the entire ship. _“This is med-centre. Urgent assistance requested! Urgent assistance!”  
  
“What was that?” _ Shareen asked.   
  
“It’s the telly. I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you later, bye!” Rose said quickly and shut her phone. Riley was already typing the answer into the computer.   
  
_“Urgent assistance!”  
  
“Abi, they’re on their way.” _ Erina replied over the com.   
  
Martha, Riley, and Rose looked glanced at each other nervously. There was a faint ding and then with a hiss, the door unlocked and slid open. Martha gave herself a little shake and detached the clamp. They ran on through to the next door and Rose headed back towards the engine room.   
  
_“What’s happening to you?”  
  
 **“Burn with me.”**_  
  
Rose’s eyes widened. It was the same voice before, the one she’d heard in her head. There it was again, loud and menacing, only this time it was real. She looked over her shoulder at Martha for a moment and saw her friend looking terrified back at her.  
  
 ** _“Burn with me.”_**  
  
Rose fled back the way she’d come, leaping over the junction points. She caught herself on a bit of piping and swung around, bounding down the stairs to the engine room, calling the Doctor’s name.   
  
**_“Burn with me.”_**  
  
 _“K-Korwin, you’re sick!”_  
  
“Doctor!”  
  
“He’s gone up to the medcentre.” Erina shouted. “No! Don’t go up there!” she added when Rose turned to go.  
  
 ** _“BURN…WITH…ME!”_**  
  
For a moment, everyone in the ship was frozen in place. Waiting, listening. And then Abi started to scream in agony.   
  
The computer droned out the time until impact once more.   
  
The screams ended abruptly.   
  
They waited, expecting to hear her scream again or that voice to growl some more. But all they heard was Martha, asking what that had been. The Doctor told them to just keep going.  
  
Rose gave herself a quick shake, rubbing the sweat off the back of her neck. There was nothing she could do to help and it was stupid to run off on her own if there was something loose on the ship with them that wanted them all to fall. Whatever that was, she was willing to bet it was what had sabotaged the engine.   
  
Besides, she had her own problem. It was getting hotter by the second and she was starting to wonder if it was more than just their proximity to the sun. He’d the TARDIS could handle extreme temperatures but to what extent? What would happen if it became too hot in that room for the TARDIS to handle? For whatever reason, Rose and the TARDIS were somehow linked. If the ship burned would she feel it, too?   
  
“Rose.” Rose blinked. Erina was standing right in front of her. “Hey, you in there? I asked if you could help me get these parts.”  
  
“Oh, yeah, sure.” She nodded, rubbing her forehead.  
  
Erina frowned. “You alright?”  
  
“We’re about thirty minutes away from crashing into a star and it feels like we’re in a sauna. Yeah, I’m doin’ great. Come on, let’s get those tools so we can get the hell out of here.”  
  
“Where are you from?” Erina asked as they ascended the stairs together.   
  
The Doctor had said this system was half a universe away from Earth and she had no idea how long it would take to reach here from there in this day and age. She figured it was best not to say. “We’re just travellers, that’s all.”   
  
Thankfully, Erina seemed to find this answer acceptable because she didn’t press it. “Yeah, well, not me. Not for much longer. I met Riley a few months back while I was workin’ as a waitress. He told me comin’ to space would be great. Told me I’d have the time of me life. He helped me get this job and now I’m at the bottom of the heap. As soon as we dock on Alpha, I’m outta here.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
Erina grunted.  
  
 _“Everybody listen to me!”_ Captain McDonnell ordered over the intercom. Rose and Erina paused, looking up. _“Something has infected Korwin. We think… He killed Abi Lerner.”_  
  
So it seemed Rose had correctly guessed Abi’s fate. Beside her, Erina grimaced and looked like she might cry and opened a storage compartment. She started pulling things out and handing them to Rose.   
  
_“None of you must go anywhere near him, is that clear?”  
  
“Understood Captain,” _ replied Ashton over the intercom. _“Erina? Get back here with that equipment.”_  
  
Looking annoyed, Erina grabbed the intercom control and jabbed her finger at the mute button. “Whatever you say, _boss_.” she growled. “I swear, I hate him sometimes. It’s always go there, come back, fetch this, carry these, make drinks, sweep up.”  
  
“I know how you feel.” Rose grumbled. “I used to work in a shop. Some of the customers–aah!”  
  
While she’d been speaking, Erina had removed the last part they needed and shut the door, revealing a tall, hulking figure wearing a work mask. He breathed heavily, rasping, like a less mechanical Darth Vader. Both girls gasped and stepped backwards.   
  
**“Burn with me,”** the man growled with the voice from the intercom. The tapping sensation from earlier returned. This time it pounded into her skull, causing her temples to throb painfully.  
  
With a cry, Rose dropped the parts and clutched at her head. Heat started to seep into her mind through the cracks steeping from the place where the thing had punched at her shields. She could almost see it: the solid white walls protecting her, the red cracks in it, and fire seeping through.   
  
_**Burn with me.**_  
  
 **“Burn with me.”**  
  
“ _No!_ ” Rose screamed and her voice carried a faint echo. In her mind, a wolf howled at the invasion. She skittered away from him, lashing out with one hand. “ _Get out of my head!_ ”   
  
The thing that used to be Korwin took a heavy step backwards at the force she’d exerted from her mind. The fire receded enough for her to focus. Grabbing Erina’s hand, she pulled the startled young woman towards the stairs. They went upwards instead of back down to the engine room. Korwin followed, but they were quicker.  
  
She had to get to the Doctor so he could fix the damage that thing had caused. Next time she might not be able to fight it off and she didn’t want to know what would happen if it got all the way through.


	27. Burning

  
The Doctor’s hearts nearly stopped when Rose burst into the medcentre with the young engineer (what was her name? Erina, that’s it), both of them breathing like they’d run a marathon. Erina’s pupils were dilated with fear and she quivered from the adrenaline racing through her veins. Rose’s eyes were shining faintly, her face was twisted in grimace, and she let out a cry of pain, clutching at her head.   
  
The Doctor dropped the scan results and was at her side immediately.  
  
“Tell me what happened,” he ordered. Rose whimpered and clutched at her head, unable to articulate a reply.  
  
“K-Korwin!” Erina stuttered. “He…he’s d-down there–I dunno if he followed us–but he started talkin’ an’–an’ she just started screaming!”   
  
“It’s trying to get in my head!” Rose gasped. “It burns!”  
  
She opened her eyes and gazed up at him pleadingly, lowering her hands from her head. She saw his jaw tighten and he put his hands on her temples. She nodded once and closed her eyes. She felt his mind slip into hers, passing through the shields with ease, surprisingly cool compared to the fire circling the edges. He made a low growling noise as he assessed the damage and started to repair her existing shields and erect new ones. There was another presence, too, working alongside him: the TARDIS trying to protect her, even as she focused on protecting herself from the fiery parasite.  
  
McDonnell, Scannell, and Erina looked on in confusion and with a hint of suspicion.  
  
The burn had faded considerably by the time the Doctor withdrew from her mind. “That should do for now, but I don’t know how long it’ll last.” His voice was dangerously flat. “Whatever infected Korwin is trying to take you as well. I tried, but its taken hold on the edge of your mind, just beyond the shields, and I can’t remove it. We don’t have that kind of time. When exactly did this start?”  
  
“Just after we got here. When I was lookin’ at the sun.”  
  
She could see the gears in his mind turning. All of this had something to do with the sun. They both knew it. But what? What could a sun do? Was the parasite using it for power?   
  
“You’ve kept it out on your own until now, but your proximity to Korwin must’ve made it more powerful. Try to keep away from him and, just to be safe, don’t look out the window anymore.”  
  
She nodded. “But, Doctor, my mind, it’s really close to the TARDIS’s. What happens if whatever this is…gets to her through me?”   
  
The Doctor rounded on McDonnell. “Now we’ve really got problems. You’re husband’s gone, and trust me when I say we don’t want Rose to go the same way. Is there anything you can think of that would’ve provoked this? Nobody’s working on anything secret, ‘cause it’s vital that you tell me.”   
  
“I know every inch of this ship,” Captain McDonnell replied tersely. “I know every detail of my crew’s lives. There is nothing.”  
  
He glared at her. “Then why is this thing so interested in you?”  
  
McDonnell shook her head. “I wish I knew.”  
  
He took a deep breath and backed away. “Erina, you don’t feel anything, do you? Nothing burning?”  
  
“No, I feel fine, but–oh my God, _ABI_!” she shrieked, noticing for the first time the shape scorched into the wall, and realized what her fate would’ve been if Rose hadn’t pulled her away.   
  
_“Doctor, we’re through to area 17,”_ Martha called over the intercom. Rose sighed with relief when she heard her voice.   
  
He pressed the _All_ button and spoke into the microphone. “ _Good, keep going. You’ve got to get to area one and reboot those engines._ ”  
  
Martha rolled her eyes. Bloody alien. They were going as fast as they could and she was exhausted. The heat was getting worse with every passing second and her muscles were absolutely aching. She hefted the clamp up and headed for the door. Behind her, Riley groaned and smacked the computer. She raced back to his side to see what the matter was.   
  
“Everything on this ship is so cheap!” he complained. Something banged back the way they came and they both turned. “Who’s there?” he called nervously.   
  
The banging continued so he headed for the door. She set the clamp down on the counter and followed him. A figure appeared in the smoke, tall, wearing work clothes, gloves, and a mask. “Is that Korwin?”  
  
“No, wait a minute.” Riley took a step closer. “Oh, Ashton. What are are you doing?”  
  
 **“Burn with me.”**  
  
Martha froze. Those words. It wasn’t the exact same voice, but those were the words Korwin had said over the intercom. Whatever had taken Korwin must’ve got Ashton, too. She automatically glanced around, locating any possible escapes and trying to figure out which one was most likely to work, just like she’d been taught to do. But usually it was the Doctor who found the way out and they followed as quick as they could.  
  
Riley tensed, but he kept moving forward. She reached out, seizing the back of his shirt. “Don’t, you idiot!” she hissed. “He’s been infected!”   
  
**“Burn with me! BURN WITH ME!”**  
  
Ashton lifted his hand to the visor. He was blocking the way back and the way forward was sealed with no chance of getting it open in time. There was only one thing to do. She slammed her hand against the biggest button on the wall next to her (it was always the biggest button) and a hatch slid open.  
  
“MOVE!” she bellowed, yanking on his shirt again. They scrambled through the door and she flew across the room, smacking her hand against the button to close the door. She rested against the wall for a moment, loving and hating the familiar buzz of adrenaline, and tried to control her breathing. It was so damn hot.   
  
Korwin appeared in the doorway and Riley scrambled to unlock the next door. He pressed a series of numbers on a keypad and the hatch slid open.  
  
“What is that?” Martha demanded.  
  
“Escape pod. In, quick!”   
  
“But–”  
  
“Go!” He shoved her towards the opening. She climbed through, moving aside so he could get in and he shut the door behind her.   
  
“Now what, Einstein?” she demanded. “We’re trapped!”  
  
“No, don’t worry,” Riley tried to reassure her. “He shouldn’t be able to–”  
  
 _“Airlock sealed. Jettison escape pod.”_  
  
She rounded on him. “I’m sorry, what was that? He shouldn’t be able to do what? Because it sounds like he’s about to SEND US FLYING INTO THE BLEEDIN’ SUN!”  
  
Riley lunged for the keypad and started typing frantically to halt the ejection sequence. She leaned over to the com unit next to the keypad and pressed the button labeled _All._  
  
“Doctor!” she shouted. “We’re stuck in an escape pod in Area 17! Ashton’s been infected, he’s tryin’ to jettison us! HELP!” She turned to Riley. “Can you stop it?”  
  
“I’m trying, I’m trying…”  
  
 _“We’re coming, Martha!”_ Rose shouted through the com.  
  
 _“Jettison: held,”_ the computer reported.  
  
Riley sighed, resting his head against the wall. “Thank you.”  
  
“Now get us out of here before–”  
  
 _“Jettison: reactivated.”_  
  
She pounded her hands against the glass, trying and failing to keep from panicking. It wouldn’t help anyone but she was buzzing with adrenaline and the urge to move. Riley was good, he knew this ship and he knew computers. He was muttering to himself about sequences. Confident, like the Doctor was and that helped calm her a bit. He just had to hold Ashton off until they got here. He could do it.  
  
 _“Jettison: held. Escape pod stabilized.”_  
  
They both sighed in relief and she put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re good. You’re really good.”   
  
Almost immediately the attack from Ashton resumed. Riley groaned and sighed in the same breath and started typing again furiously. Martha kept an eye on Ashton. She wished she could see under the helmet. She’d always been more afraid of things in masks during their travels. She couldn’t see them so it was easy for her brain to conjure up fears from the tiniest details. With Ashton, it was the visor. Black, flat, and she knew his eyes were staring at them from behind it. Then his head turned, looking at something off to the side. The Doctor. It had to be.  
  
An alarm blared within the escape pod and the computer reported the restarting of the jettison sequence. Riley jerked away.  
  
“He’s crushed the circuit. I can’t stop it.” Then he seemed to realize what this would mean and he turned to Martha, panicked. “I can’t stop it!”  
  
“Try!” she ordered and moved back to the door. Maybe there was something she could do. A lever or a switch or a button to open the door. After all there had to be a way to escape the escape pod once it landed.   
  
On the far side of the airlock, the thing that used to be Ashton stepped away from the ruined controls towards the two time travelers.   
  
Rose waited behind him in the doorway, holding her head as the thing tried to bash its way into her mind again. The Doctor walked towards Ashton, his entire body radiating power and confidence.  
  
“Come on,” he goaded. “Let’s see you.”  
  
Ashton approached him, breathing heavily like Darth Vader, until they stood nose to nose.   
  
“I wanna know what you really are.”  
  
Ashton started to comply, lifting his hand to the visor the way Korwin had.   
  
She moaned in pain. “Doctor…”  
  
Where the fire pounded against her mind there was suddenly ice. She inhaled sharply, her back straightening at the same time Ashton suddenly shrieked in pain. He backed an doubled over, grunting and gurgling. Moments later he’d recovered. He stared at them for a moment then shoved past the Doctor like he didn’t even see him there. Rose jumped out of the doorway, pressing herself into the wall as he passed. The pounding in her head didn’t return, even when he was within touching distance, and she exhaled in relief.  
  
Except now he was heading for the engine room and Korwin was down there somewhere, too.  
  
“McDonnell!” the Doctor shouted into the com. “Ashton’s heading in your direction and he _is_ infected.”  
  
 _“Thank you, Doctor. …Korwin’s dead.”_  
  
Rose peered through the window out into the airlock. In the pod just a few feet away she could see Martha searching the door with her hands. Rose pounded her fist against the door. “Doctor–Doctor she’s in there!”  
  
 _“Airlock decompression completed,”_ droned the computer. _“Jettisoning pod.”_  
  
“NO!” Rose shouted.   
  
Martha looked up and for a moment their eyes met. She tapped on the window. Rose broke the contact, turning to the Doctor. “Do something,” she demanded.   
  
The Doctor examined the controls helplessly. “I can’t. There’s nothing I can do; they’re completely wrecked.”  
  
Rose knew there was no way of keeping it off her face when she looked back through the glass and she saw the exact moment when Martha realized their fate. The Doctor joined Rose at the window and they stared at their friend as the pod disengaged and began to float away. They could see the tears starting to trickle down her cheeks. She reached up with one hand to wipe them away and placed her other one on the glass.  
  
Rose pulled her mobile from her pocket and dialed Martha’s number. Martha didn’t look away as she pulled it out, opened it, and pressed it against her ear  
  
 _“Sorry.”_  
  
“There’s nothing we can do.”  
  
 _“I know. …It’s been great, really.”_  
  
“Martha–”  
  
“No,” the Doctor growled suddenly. “There might be a way.” He lunged towards the intercom and shouted for Scannell to bring him a spacesuit.  
  
 _“Rose?”_  
  
She shook her head quickly. “Um–um, the Doctor’s got an idea. Just hang on.”  
  
 _“Alright…. But–but just in case… will you…will you take my stuff home? Tell my family what happened. Show them the pictures so they knows you’re not lying.”_  
  
“It’s not going to come to that.”  
  
 _“But just in case it does. Tell them I love them. And tell them I didn’t regret travelling with you. I wouldn’t have missed this for anything.”_  
  
“I’ll see you in a bit,” she told Martha. “Just hang in there.” She flipped the phone shut and held it into her hands.   
  
“Rose.” The Doctor gripped her arms tightly. “I need you to trust me.”  
  
“Always. What are you going to do? Ah!” she gasped, her hand flying to her head as she felt another burst of cold on the edge of her mind.  
  
“What’s wrong?”  
  
“I think…I think Ashton’s down,” Rose said slowly, lifting her head.   
  
Scannell and Erina jumped through the door with an orange spacesuit that looked too much like the ones from Krop Tor and a helmet. She recoiled at the sight of it. The Doctor let go of her arms and took the suit from him wordlessly. He pulled it on quickly and Rose helped him with the zippers and fastenings, just like she had last time. She knew what he was going to do now or at least she had a general idea. There was something out there on the hull that could bring them back and he was going to go for it. She knew he had to try just as she knew   
  
“I can’t let you do this,” Scannell blurted.   
  
“You’re wasting your breath, Scannell. You’re not gonna stop me.”  
  
“You wanna open an airlock in flight, on a ship spinning into the sun. No one can survive that!”  
  
“Oh, just you watch.”   
  
“It’s suicide! This close to the sun, the shields will barely protect you.”  
  
Rose’s fingers froze and she lifted her eyes to his. He gazed down at her, reminding her of her trust in him and that there was no other option. If he didn’t do this then Martha would die. Swallowing, she continued adjusting the straps and then her hands fell limply to her sides.  
  
The Doctor spoke to Scannell as she worked. “If I can boost the magnetic lock on the ship’s exterior, it should re-magnetize the pod. Now, while I’m out there, you have got to get the rest of those doors open. We _need_ those auxiliary engines. Rose, go with him.”  
  
“No, I’m not leaving you,” she argued. “Erina can go.”  
  
“It’s too late!” Scannell cried.  
  
The Doctor fixed him with a severe look. “I’m not just going to let her die.”   
  
He started to put his helmet on, but Rose seized his face, yanking it down to hers, and mashed their lips together. She pulled back quickly (far too quickly, in his opinion, but time was of the essence) and tapped him firmly on the chest. “I want that spacesuit back in one piece, you got that?”   
  
He smiled and slid the helmet into place. “Yes, sir.”   
  
Rose watched as the door slid open and he stepped into the airlock. She moved up to the window and focused on his back instead of the burning sun as best she could. His shoulders were rising and falling faster than normal. Was he afraid? Realizing he was actually afraid for himself didn’t help her at all. She wished he would turn around so she could see his face, if only for a second.  
  
 _“Impact in 11:15. Heat shield failing. At ten percent.”_  
  
When the Doctor opened the airlock and the sun streamed in at full force, she had to look away. No looking at the sun he’d said and she was inclined to agree. She ducked away from the window and looked up at Erina and Scannell. They were just standing there wasting precious seconds. She snapped at them.  
  
“Well, don’t just stand there! Go! Get the doors open!” she ordered.   
  
The two of them jumped into action. Erina picked up the clamp and attached it to the door while Scannell got to work typing. McDonnell leaped over the threshold and told them Ashton had been dealt with. She looked around then demanded to know where the Doctor had gone. Rose jerked her head towards the airlock. McDonnell’s eyes widened.  
  
“The pod jettisoned. The crazy bastard’s trying to pull them back,” Scannell explained. “Ugh! Captain, what’s your favorite dessert?”  
  
“Næmarian Chízkí,” she answered without looking, hands on her hips. “You let him go?” she demanded.  
  
“He had to try. She’s family.” Rose closed her eyes and pressed her hands to her temples, trying to ignore the tapping she was beginning to feel against her shields. It wasn’t strong enough to be a proper knock yet, but that thing was trying to get into her head again. With Korwin and Ashton down, she was the only other one onboard it had any hold on and it wanted her.  
  
After Scannell called on the com for another answer, McDonnell went to help him and Erina with the questions. Rose turned to the intercom unit and pressed the button that linked to the suit coms. “You alright, Doctor?”  
  
 _“I can’t!”_ he screamed after a moment and her heart nearly stopped. _“I can’t reach. I don’t know how much longer I can last.”_  
  
“Doctor, you’ve got to. She needs you! I believe in you,” she added. She waited a moment to see if he’d say something. When he didn’t, she let go of the button and sighed, rubbing her forehead.   
  
_“Escape pod: recalled. Impact in 9:30. Heat shields failing. At eight percent.”_  
  
Rose exhaled in relief, pressing her hands to her face. “Oh, thank God,” she whispered.   
  
**Fear** flared in the back of her mind where she was linked to TARDIS, so intense and powerful that her knees buckled. She cried out as she fell to her knees, throwing her hands out to catch herself. _She saw the Doctor’s face, the sun, and an angry voice roared, **“He shall burn with me.”**_  
  
 _“Doctor, close the airlock now!”_ Scannell’s voice echoed painfully around her.  
  
The TARDIS cried out again and Rose opened her mouth and screamed.   
  
_“Rose! Rose, are you alright?”_ Scannell shouted.   
  
She knelt there gasping for a few seconds, then pushed herself to her feet and pressed the talk button. “’m fine, but I think somethin’s wrong.”  
  
 _“McDonnell’s on her way.”_  
  
The airlock door slid open and Rose turned. Seconds passed and the Doctor did not emerge. She called his name but he didn’t respond. She was afraid of what she’d see if she looked around the corner, but she was bracing herself to do so when he fell out of the airlock. He hit the floor almost immediately and struggled away from the opening. Martha emerged from the escape pod, calling his name as Rose dropped down beside him.   
  
She reached out to roll him over and he turned sharply, his face twisted into a grimace. He opened his eyes and a bright light like the sun filled the socket. She recoiled as he rasped, “Stay away from me!”  
  
She landed on her bum and skittered back. Whatever it was started to pound against her head again, more intense than before. She tried to grab her head, but Martha and Riley yanked her up by her arms as Captain McDonnell ran up behind them.   
  
“No!” the Doctor shouted. Martha and Riley glanced at each other in confusion. “Leave her alone–argh! She’s done nothing!”  
  
The Doctor pressed himself against the wall, trying to get away from them even as they moved closer. “It’s your fault, Captain McDonnell!”  
  
The three of them looked at her. McDonnell’s breathing increased and she glanced at them then pointed further down the junctions. “Riley, get down there and help Scannell and Erina with the answers. GO!”  
  
Riley ran.   
  
“You mined that sun!” the Doctor screamed at her. “Stripped its surface for cheap fuel.” He panted through clenched teeth, gripping the wall with one hand. All the while, his eyes remained firmly shut. “You should have scanned for life!”  
  
“I don’t understand.”  
  
But Rose did. Before, when she’d been looking at the sun, she’d noticed the way it moved and seemed to be glaring at them. Just after that was when the pounding in her head had begun and the heat. The sun. Trying to get into her mind. She’d only looked at it for a few seconds and it hadn’t been able to get a good hold on her before she’d broke contact. That must’ve been how Korwin got infected. He’d looked into the sun for too long and he didn’t have the same defenses she did. It must have crawled right on in.   
  
The Doctor had been out there, mere miles from it, exposed to the heat, and looking at it for who knows how long? It had smashed all his mental barriers, burned right through them like flash paper.   
  
“That sun is alive! A living organism!” He paused, panting, then went on. “You scooped out its heart, used it for fuel, and now it’s screaming!”  
  
“What do you mean?!” McDonnell demanded. “How can a sun be alive?! Why’s he saying that?”  
  
“Because it’s living in me.”  
  
McDonnell gasped, realizing finally what she’d done. Korwin, Ashton, and Abi’s had died, the ship was about to burn up and they were all about to die, and it was all her fault. “Oh my God…”  
  
“Humans!” the Doctor shouted, writhing in pain. “You grab whatever’s nearest and bleed it dry. _Aaaarh! You should have scanned!_ ”  
  
“It takes too long! We’d be caught! Fusion scoops are illegal!”  
  
“And look at what you’ve done!” Rose snarled at her, the pounding at her head worsening. McDonnell took one look at her and backed away.  
  
Rose thought she might have said, “Oh my God!” but she couldn’t hear her over the Doctor’s scream of agony.  
  
“You’ve got to freeze me!” he gasped, trying to push himself up.  
  
“What?” Martha demanded. She stepped closer and grabbed onto his arm. Ignoring the fire trying to seep into her head, Rose grabbed his other arm and together they hauled him up.  
  
“Stasis chamber! You gotta keep me…below minus two-hundred. Freeze it out of me!” He screamed again and gasped for air. Now instead of anger, he looked afraid, like he’d just realized something. “It’ll use me to kill you if you don’t! The closer we get to the sun, the stronger it–aaaaaaggggh!” He doubled over in pain. “Quickly! Quickly!”  
  
Rose moved his arm around her shoulders and rubbed the back of his head, trying to sooth him. “Come on, I’ve got you,” she told him and his face turned towards hers. He looked so scared.  
  
The four of them moved quickly through the areas and tried to keep from dropping him. The Doctor did his best to keep himself upright but he couldn’t help the pained whimpering, grunting, and screaming. Every time he went down, McDonnell would turn around and help them get him back on his feet, but other than that she just let the girls carry him. They struggled when they got to the stairs since they were only wide enough for one person, maybe two. They had to turn and step sideways, Rose pulling and Martha and McDonnell doing their best to push him up. By the time they got to the medcentre, they were all exhausted and the Doctor was incapable of keeping himself upright for much longer.  
  
Rose briefly noticed Ashton’s dead body in the corner and realized what must’ve happened to him.   
  
McDonnell grabbed his legs and the three of them lifted him onto the bed of the stasis chamber. Martha immediately snatched up the instruction manual, set it down on the stand beside the chamber, and flipped through the pages. Rose backed away from the Doctor, holding her head. She could _feel_ the sun shoving its way through, bit by bit, smashing through the walls, strengthened by their proximity.   
  
Martha and McDonnell were yelling at each other, but she barely heard them.  
  
 ** _You will all burn. Don’t try to fight it. Burn with me, you wretched thing._**  
  
 _I said get out of my head!_  
  
“Rose? Where are you? Rose!” the Doctor yelled and she realized he’d been calling for her for the past few seconds. She looked up and saw the terror in his face, thinking she’d left him.   
  
“I’m here,” she said, stumbling forward. She grasped his hand with both her own and his fingers locked around her. “It’s okay. I’m right here.”   
  
“Ten seconds, Martha. That’s all I’ll be able to take!”   
  
He screamed again, gripping Rose’s hand so tightly that it hurt. “Get rid of it or I could kill you,” he growled darkly. “I could kill you all.”  
  
The Doctor cried out and Rose ducked her head, kissing his hot cheek. “Shhh,” she soothed. Freeing one hand, she used it to brush the hair away from his face.   
  
“I’m scared,” he whimpered. “I’m so scared.”   
  
She kissed his cheek again. “I know. I’m scared too. It’s gonna be alright.”  
  
“It’s bloody killing me! You know what that means!”  
  
“It’s not gonna happen. You can do this, just hold on for a few more seconds. Martha–” she looked up at her “–please tell me you know how to work that.”  
  
“I think so,” Martha said.   
  
“R-Rose…” He shrieked, his back arching. “I don’t… I don’t want to…”  
  
Putting her hands on either side of his face she kissed his burning lips, flinching when the pain in her head spiked. “I won’t leave you,” she told him. “No matter what.”   
  
Then she stepped back and nodded to Martha, who was gripping a lever with both hands. The medical student took a deep, shaky breath and pushed the lever forward. The bed slid back into the stasis chamber, clicking into place. Martha punched in the numbers and started the process.   
  
The screams that followed were worse than almost any sound she’d ever heard him make. The cold was hurting the piece of the sun in her mind and while it was a relief to her it was agonizing to the Doctor. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she sobbed as he shrieked. She wanted to reach out and hold him through it the way Martha was holding her. Instead she clamped her hands over her ears so she wouldn’t have to hear him. She couldn’t bear it.   
  
When the machine abruptly powered down she knew before he screamed that it was too soon. Martha frantically pushed the power button, to no avail.  
  
“No!” the Doctor roared. “You can’t stop it! Not yet!”  
  
Martha spun around and demanded, “What happened?!”  
  
“Power’s been cut in engineering.” McDonnell realized.  
  
“But who’s down there?”  
  
McDonnell swallowed. “Leave it to me.” She departed without another word.  
  
The girls watched her go then looked at each other for a second. Martha tried to get the machine working again and Rose put her hand on the only part of the Doctor that wasn’t in the chamber: his ankle. She wasn’t even sure if he could feel it through the suit and boot but she hoped. He was screaming again and she watched the ice crystals covering his body begin to melt. His temperature was rising so quickly that the water evaporated before even properly turned to steam. Within mere seconds he was nearly back to where he’d been before.  
  
“Do somethin’!” she shouted.  
  
“I’m trying!” Martha snapped. “But it’s not working!”  
  
The Doctor grunted through his teeth. “Listen, both of you! I’ve only got a moment. You gotta go!”   
  
“No way!”  
  
“We’re not leaving you.”  
  
“Get to the front! Vent the engines!” he ordered. “Sun particles in the fuel, get rid of them.”  
  
“You go,” Rose told Martha. “I’m staying.”  
  
“No!” the Doctor yelled. “You have to go, Rose! It wants you next! Please, I don’t–AAARGH! I–I don’t want to kill you!”  
  
Rose inhaled shakily and backed away from the chamber.  
  
“We’ll be back for you,” the medical student promised. Martha grabbed her hand and Rose let her pull her out the door.   
  
They thudded down the stairs and raced through the corridors. Ducking under piping and leaping over the thresholds, and twisting to avoid hitting the machinery. When Rose stumbled, the fire almost through to the last layer of protection in her mind, Martha seized her arm and hauled her onwards. They were nearly in the sun now, the computer indicating less than five minutes until they were swallowed up by it.   
  
**You will all burn with me!**  
  
“ _GET OUT OF ME!_ ” Rose screamed.   
  
Her legs stopped responding and she went down. It like someone had suddenly blocked the connection between her brain and her legs cutting off all control and most of the sensation. Martha grunted, struggling to keep them both from falling, and only just managed to ease Rose to the ground. “No! Just go!” she told Martha. “Give it back!”  
  
Martha squeezed her arm once and left without a word. Rose sighed and used her arms to pull herself over to the wall. Dimly she registered that what should be an unbearably hot surface was only borderline uncomfortable. She clutched at her head, pressing her hands to her ears to block out the sounds of the ship and the computer counting down the seconds to their deaths.   
  
The sun had broken into her mind and now the heat slowly spreading through her body as its mind tried to reach her soul.   
  
_Please stop,_ she begged.  
  
 _ **You will all burn for this.**_  
  
 _But we didn’t do anything! We only came to help._  
  
 _ **You came to help those who would use me for their own gain. You are no better.**_  
  
Rose growled at it. She could see it clearly in her mind. There was only one layer separating her from the fire. As soon as it got through it would take her over as surely as it was taking over the Doctor.   
  
But then something occurred to her. She should’ve realized ages ago.  
  
 _I’m just a human. You should’ve burned through me a while ago. Why haven’t you? …You_ can’t _, can you?_  
  
The fire was circling, attacking, but it didn’t even make a dent in this last wall. Something was protecting her. Something stronger than any defense the Doctor had given her. Something neither Korwin nor Ashton had. She tried to move again and found that her legs were still impossibly heavy and almost numb. It had enough of a hold now to keep her in place, to make it feel like flames were licking at her skin, but it couldn’t completely take her.  
  
 _You can’t kill me._  
  
 _ **No. But he can.**_  
  
“R-Rose…?”   
  
She heard his voice calling her name even through her hands. She opened her eyes and saw the Doctor on the floor at the entrance to the area. “Doctor?”  
  
His head snapped around and she saw horror flit across his face as he realized how close she was. “No! You have to…have to go!” he grunted, crawling towards her. “Run!”  
  
“I can’t.”  
  
“Rose, _please_!”  
  
“I can’t,” she repeated, struggling to move. She shoved against the invading force and willed her body to cooperate. She managed to scoot a few inches to the right before her limbs locked up again, heat coursing through.   
  
The Doctor grunted, struggling against every movement towards her. “I can’t fight it…” He screeched wordlessly, face contorting in pain.  
  
“You’ve got to for just a bit longer.”  
  
The Doctor was just a few feet from her now, struggling with the last of his energy to halt his progress. Their puppet master would use him to kill her in a few moments. …And that was okay. She’d rather he kill her now than let the sun use her to slow down or even kill the others.   
  
That didn’t stop tears from dripping down her cheeks.   
  
At least her Mum wouldn’t be left to wait in an empty flat. She was happy, safe, and loved.   
  
He screamed again wordlessly and when he stopped she seized this one last chance to tell him what she should have a long time ago. “I love you, Doctor, no matter what happens.”   
  
His entire body was shaking with the effort to hold still. “I…Rose…” he gasped, arching his back, face twisting. Then his eyes opened, shining with the power and fury of the sun. She flinched away from him. **“Burn with me. Burn with me, Rose!”**  
  
“ _No!_ Give him back!”   
  
_**Burn with us**_ , it thought as the Doctor screamed.  
  
“Give him back!”  
  
The ship lurched suddenly and, unable to control her limbs, Rose went flying. She collided with the Doctor and they both went rolling across the room. He cried out in pain and over that she heard the computer saying something about a fuel dump.   
  
_THERE, TAKE IT!_ she thought viciously and the TARDIS’s angry hum echoed her words. She could feel the Doctor trembling next to her, gasping for air and choking on his screams. _AND LET HIM GO._   
  
For the first time, the voice was missing its pained edge. Now there was only anger with more than a hint of a challenge. It still had control, after all. **_Why should I?_**  
  
 _Because if you do not return him to Us, We will rip your mind from this star, and place you in another that’s being sucked into a black hole while your body is left behind to sustain the people here._  
  
 _ **You cannot do such a thing.**_  
  
The Doctor shrieked again.  
  
 _Try Us._  
  
The sun did not respond verbally, but Rose felt the burning presence receding from her mind. Behind her, the Doctor’s scream slowly died away into panting. The ship lurched again and Rose found she could move of her own accord. She heard a thud as the Doctor hit the wall and a second later she crashed into him. Lightning fast, he wrapped his arms around her and held her close as the ship lurched again, violently.   
  
_**Next time there will be no mercy…**_ the sun whispered before it faded completely from her mind.   
  
As the ship’s flight evened out, Rose rolled over in his grasp and stared into his normal brown eyes. She laughed in relief, reaching up to touch a wrinkle just below his eye. “She did it.”  
  
His answering smile was as bright as the–oh, maybe not the best expression to use at the moment. The Doctor pulled her even more tightly to him and she felt his laughter resonate through her. They were sticky with sweat and would be covered in bruises soon but neither cared. She held his head in her hands while he pressed kisses along the side of her face and the top of her head. She laughed once more, the tears leaking from her eyes now ones of joy, then pulled his mouth to hers. 


	28. Cold

  
The TARDIS was already well at work repairing the mental defenses in Rose’s head by the time they’d gotten far enough from the sun that the venting chamber was safe enough to enter. She felt her barriers returning, reinforcing the feeling of safety she’d never realized she’d had until it was ripped away. The ship seemed disgruntled as she worked and Rose had the strangest feeling the TARDIS would be chastising her for getting into this mess if she could.  
  
The Doctor was deeply shaken by today’s events. She thought it would’ve been obvious even to someone who didn’t know him well. He was all smiles and laughter as he hugged Martha and patted the crew on their shoulders but his eyes were guarded and every time Rose left his field of vision she’d notice him immediately shift so he could see her again. She left the room without him once and when she came back she saw him visibly relax and his pupils return to normal size. That was when she fully understood the depth of his fear and she made an effort to keep close to him after that.   
  
Only three of the crew had survived–Scannell, Riley, and Erina–and they followed the time travellers back to their ship to see what kind of machine managed to land in the middle of a venting chamber and would survive that kind of heat. When the Doctor gestured flourishingly to the TARDIS, the three of them gaped.   
  
The Doctor chuckled and circled the TARDIS, looking for any damage.   
  
Rose rested her forehead on the door. _Thank you._  
  
Scannell was the first to approach the TARDIS and looked the blue police box up and down in disbelief. “This is never your ship.”  
  
“Compact, eh? And another good word: robust!” he patted the side of the ship and sniffed proudly. “Barely a scorch mark on her.”  
  
“How is that possible?” Erina demanded. “Got so hot in here the thermometer broke. It should’ve burnt to a crisp.”   
  
“Like I said. Robust. Well, we’ll be off now.”   
  
Rose took that as her cue and pulled the key from under her shirt and slid it into the lock. She felt the Doctor’s fingers brush her arm and she glanced up at him.   
  
“We can’t just leave you drifting with no fuel.” Martha objected.  
  
Riley smiled at her concern. “We’ve sent out an official mayday. The authorities will pick us up soon enough.”  
  
“Though how we explain what happened…” Scannell shook his head.  
  
The Doctor pushed the door open and sighed. He had no love for that sun, but he’d felt the sun’s pain and understood why it had lashed out. “Just tell them–that sun needs care and protection, just like any other living thing.”  
  
Scannell nodded. Without another word, the Doctor stepped into the TARDIS, only too eager to leave this place behind. When the door shut behind him, Rose leaned away from the TARDIS. She’d been considering how to warn them and though the Doctor had done a good job of it just now she felt the need to take it one step further. There was a chance that people would try to study the sun–learn how it was alive, maybe experiment a bit. They had to know what would happen.   
  
“When it was in my head, I was able to speak to it. You’ve got to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. It said it won’t be merciful next time. Stay away. Don’t mess with it. You’ve got to warn people.”  
  
“We will,” Riley promised.   
  
“Good.” She smiled at them and started to head inside but Erina stopped her.  
  
“Hey, Rose!”   
  
Rose turned and Erina smiled at her. “Thank you for earlier. You saved my life.”  
  
Rose smiled and nodded, then stepped inside the TARDIS.   
  
The Doctor stood rigidly at the console, facing away from the doors. She remained where she was for a moment and tried to discern the movement of his shoulders that meant he was breathing. She grew concerned when she realized he was still as a statue and quickly walked up the ramp towards him. Wordlessly, she slid her arms around his middle and pulled him against her tightly. For a moment he remained stiff in her embrace but then his hands came up and covered hers.   
  
Martha joined them a minute later, prancing up the ramp. “So! Didn’t really need either of you in–” She must’ve noticed they way they were standing because she cut off mid sentence. She walked towards them slowly, but with purpose, her heels clacking against the grating. “You alright?”  
  
The Doctor sniffed, clearing his throat, and pulled away from Rose. He flipped and sent them away from Torajji and into the time vortex. “So, where to next? I say we skip our previously planned trip and go somewhere cold. How about ice skating and sledding? I know the perfect–”  
  
“I’ve got a better idea.” Martha interrupted. She grabbed Rose’s hand then the Doctor’s and pulled them out of the console room. They let her pull them down the hallways, glancing at each other unsurely. They passed their rooms, the kitchen, the library, the karaoke bar, and Martha eventually stopped at a door with a blue handle. She let go of Roses hand and opened the door, peeking inside experimentally. She’d requested the door with the blue knob always lead to the pool weeks ago. Time to see if the TARDIS had made it permanent.   
  
“Right, in we go.” She withdrew her head, kicking the door open with her foot, and shoved the pair of them into the poolroom.   
  
Today the pool was a roundish shape, about ten yards across and six feet deep at most. The walls were shades of white mixed with blues–ice, they realized–and on the ceiling they could see indistinct swirling colors, like the aurora borealis. There was a tiny waterfall trickling down from a ledge on one of the walls. It was like a tiny lake inside a cave of ice. The air smelled fresh, like water with a hint of cool mint, and the water echoed off the walls like pebbles dropping into a shallow pool.   
  
Martha strode purposefully past them, hopping from foot to foot to get her shoes and socks off, pulled the cellphone from her pocket, the key from around her neck, and set them on a table. Then she walked right up to the edge of the pool and cannonballed in, clothes and all.   
  
The Doctor and Rose looked at each other, shrugged, and removed their shoes. Rose set her phone, key, and watch off to the side; the Doctor shucked his jacket, dress shirt, tie, and pulled various items out of his trouser pockets. Then they jumped in together.   
  
The water was blissful, not too cold, but not too hot, either. It was perfect.   
  
Martha floated lazily on her back kicking her legs idly to keep herself turning in a wide circle, careful to avoid the waterfall. Her clothes felt heavy but they weren’t enough to pull her under. The water filled her ears, muffling the sounds around her, except for the splashes made by the other occupants of the pool. It was relaxing and, she decided, the best idea she’d had all week. Until something tickled her sides and she gasped, yelping at the same time, and arched her back to get away from it.   
  
She flipped oddly in the water and pushed herself to the surface, pushing her hair out of her face. The Doctor was a few feet away, positively roaring, and Rose laughed from somewhere behind her.  
  
She narrowed her eyes at him, braced her feet against the bottom, and sprang forward. She hit him square in the chest. His feet slipped on the smooth floor and he went careening backwards into deeper water. Rose hooted gleefully and she thought she heard the TARDIS hum in amusement as well. The Doctor’s head slowly broke the surface. His usually wild locks were now limp and they clung to his skin. Martha sniggered and he frowned sullenly at her.  
  
Martha heard and felt Rose swim up beside her and she held her hand up. Rose smacked her palm. The Doctor shook his head and straightened up. Martha’s eyebrows shot towards her hairline. Apparently he’d discarded most of his layers before jumping in and all he was wearing over his chest was a thin white undershirt that hid absolutely nothing. It clung to his skin, accentuating the muscles in his chest nicely. It was rare that she saw him in anything less than an undershirt or one of his dress shirts and she took a moment to appreciate a view that usually only Rose would be privy to.  
  
Then the white undershirt was filling her vision as the Doctor jumped at his two companions, hooking his arms around them, and dropped down into the water.  
  
Later that night the Doctor and Rose were curled up together on her bed. Though, strictly speaking, it wasn’t _her_ bed anymore, the TARDIS had made certain of that. They’d gone for so long sharing a bed that she’d switched out the old one months ago for one a good foot wider so they would have enough room. The TARDIS knew full well that giving them a smaller bed (which would have been the logical way to get their relationship going further to someone unaware of Gallifreyan customs) would only serve to make the Doctor reluctant to spend as much time there. At least this way he could distance himself if he needed to without actually leaving.  
  
Rose had pulled on her fluffy pajama but had foregone her usual t-shirt in favor of a spaghetti strap shirt. Goosebumps covered her skin, partially from the cool temperature in the room, partially from his touch. He was playing with one of her shirt straps absentmindedly, his fingers brushing her skin while she stared out the window. Tonight the TARDIS was showing her a scene of London with snow falling, as if they were slowly flying over the city. Normally she preferred to look out and see stars or the view from her room on the Powell Estate but as usual the TARDIS had sensed what would be best for her.   
  
Sometimes she wasn’t sure if she loved the ship or the pilot more.   
  
_Equally in different ways_ , she thought.  
  
“I heard you,” the Doctor said quietly, breaking the silence.   
  
“You what?” she asked. Had he heard her thoughts? Shouldn’t he have to touch her temples?  
  
“Earlier, I heard what you said. Just before.”  
  
She knew what he meant or at least she hoped she did. Now was not the time for a miscommunication and, well, she wanted to hear him say it. “What did I say?”  
  
“It’s kind of blurred and the memory hurts, but you…” he inhaled deeply and after the exhale he said, “I remember.”  
  
“Remember what?” She felt him crane his neck to see her face. She tilted her head up. “What did I say?”   
  
He hesitated for a moment and then said slowly, “You told me you loved me.” He swallowed, staring down at her. She saw the unspoken question in his eyes and with it, hope, and a hint of fear.   
  
Rose smiled mistily. “Did I?”  
  
“You did. …Didn’t you?” he frowned and for a moment seemed to consider the possibility that he’d hallucinated in those last few moments before he was swallowed by the fire.   
  
She laughed lightly and kissed his chin to ease his doubt. “Yes, I did. But you already knew that.”  
  
He smiled at her, unbridled joy replacing the fear in his eyes. Of course he’d known. She’d been telling him without words for years. He ducked his head, shifting so she slid into the space between his arm and chest and pressed his lips to hers. They kissed languidly, lips sliding smoothly across each other. There was no rush, no reason for franticness or heat. Actually, heat was the last thing either of them wanted at the moment, the memories of burning so fresh in their minds.  
  
He nipped at her lip playfully before pulling back and nuzzling her cheek with his nose. She peeked her eyes open and saw that his were already open and staring.   
  
“I love you,” she whispered, breath ghosting across his cheek.  
  
The Doctor chuckled quietly. “Quite right, too,” he whispered back and kissed her again. He didn’t say the words but that was fine for now. She knew.   
  
He pulled the sheet over her shoulders and she snuggled close with her face pressed into his chest. She loved being like this. She could both feel and hear his hearts thumping their strange dual beat, half of her favorite lullaby. His fingers slid through her hair, lightly brushing across her scalp, and soothed her to sleep. She last thing she felt before she slipped under were his cool lips against her forehead.   
  
Really, she should’ve been expecting it. Years with the Doctor may have hardened her but she was no more immune to her subconscious than he was. Just a few hours after she fell asleep she awoke violently, tangled in the covers and thrashing blindly, a scream of utter terror ripping its way from her throat, and a nightmare of burning alive and being unable to move fresh in her mind. She hit the floor, still trapped in the thick duvet, and banged her head on her dresser as she struggled to get free.   
  
The door banged open and the light from the hallway spilled in. The Doctor’s face filled her vision and his hands grabbed hold of either side of her face and he tried to calm her. She continued to struggle. Looking down, he realized what was wrong and he slipped one arm around her, lifting her from the ground, and used the other to pull the blankets away from her. Tucking his arm under her legs, he scooped her up and sat down on the bed with her cradled to him. He held her firmly while rocking lightly just as he always did.   
  
Her fists gripped his shirt and she sobbed against his chest. “I’ve got you,” he soothed. “It was just a nightmare.”  
  
A shadow slid across the floor, blocking the light from outside.  
  
Martha stood in the doorway in her pajamas with her hair wrapped up. She hadn’t even bothered with a dressing gown. “What happened?”  
  
“Nightmare,” he answered.  
  
Her shoulders slumped in relief. “I thought she was dying.”  
  
“So did I for a second.” His lips twisted into something that wasn’t quite a frown but wasn’t pleased in the least. “I can handle this. Go back to bed.”  
  
Martha looked at Rose’s shuddering form and opened her mouth in protest. The Doctor gave her a grateful smile, touched by her concern, before resting his cheek on Rose’s head. She realized at the same time that this had probably happened before and that he did in fact know how to handle this, probably better than she could. So she closed her mouth, nodded once, and left without another word.   
  
He kissed Rose on the top of her head. Her sobs had begun to slow as she calmed and realized where she was, who was holding her, and who had just departed. “I’m here,” he promised. “Do you want to talk about it?”  
  
She swallowed, exhaling shakily. “It was so…h-hot and…dark. I couldn’ s-see and I couldn’ m-move and I kept screamin’ but n-n one could hear me ‘cos I couldn’ open my mouth.”  
  
His mouth twisted in anger and silently cursed himself for not foreseeing this. Of course she would have nightmares. She hadn’t been fully possessed like he had but she had in no way been spared. He should’ve known this would’ve happened. He should’ve stayed. He’d only left to do a quick check on the TARDIS systems to ensure nothing had been damaged.   
  
The TARDIS hummed in his mind accompanied by a wave of image and emotion: red anger mixed with brown understanding and pastel blue serenity. Scolding him for not realizing, understanding why, and wanting to calm them both. He realized his hearts were beating abnormally fast and he took a few deep breaths to steady himself and felt her mirror him.  
  
They stayed as they were for several long minutes. The door slid shut, cutting off most of the light, and they were enveloped in soothing darkness while the TARDIS hummed around them.  
  
“Come on, lay back down.” He lowered her to the bed, slipping his arms out from beneath her, and stood. Her hand shot out and grabbed his arm.   
  
“Stay,” she whispered.   
  
“Of course, love.”  
  
She lifted her eyes to his face and smiled. He realized what he’d said, panicked for about two seconds, and then decided he didn’t care. He plucked the sheet from the ground, leaving the duvet where it was, and draped it over her. He kicked his shoes off and walked around to the other side of the bed, stretching out behind her. When she was safely cocooned in his arms he felt her start to relax again. He hummed softly, tracing a word over and over on her stomach in Gallifreyan. It took her longer than normal but she finally drifted off.  
  
Only to start whimpering in her sleep not long after. He blew a cool breath of air across her face before kissing her temple, using the light but intimate contact to send a mental wave of calm into her subconscious. _I’m here, you’re safe_ , he whispered in her mind before withdrawing. Anything more and she might react negatively at the mental intrusion. Rose calmed.   
  
He had to repeat the process several times over the next several hours, but somehow she managed to get enough rest. When he asked, she said she hadn’t had any more nightmares, but something in her eyes told him she wasn’t entirely telling the truth. But she hadn’t woken up at any point so he had helped. That was good enough for now.   
  
“Where do you want to go today?” he asked.   
  
“Somewhere cold,” she replied, “and cloudy.”  
  
Easy enough. At breakfast he told them to dress for snowy weather. Martha dressed in a heavy red coat, snow boots, gloves, earmuffs, and a pair of water-resistant pants. Rose showed up in wearing water-resistant trousers and a jacket, snow boots, thin gloves, and a scarf. Rose arched her eyebrows at him and neither of them commented on her attire.   
  
He wouldn’t tell them if it was Earth or not, but they did see a few aliens mixed in with humans, so if it was Earth then it was far beyond their time. They spent time on the slopes and went sledding, inner tubing, and ice-skating. The Doctor wanted to try skiing but his two companions exchanged a look and immediately pulled him away from the skis. They moved away from the sports area and made a snowman, a snow TARDIS, and then a Dalek. The last one they stared at solemnly for about thirty seconds then Rose called a group of children over and asked them if they’d like to destroy it. There was something strangely satisfying about watching a group of squealing seven-year-olds demolish a Dalek.   
The next day they went to an autumn festival. The day after that they went to a winter solstice celebration and after that they showed Martha the beautiful Woman Wept.  
  
At first, Martha didn’t really think anything of it. The Doctor had said they should go to a cold place next and it was a relief after nearly being burned alive, but by the fourth day she was getting a little sick of having to bundle up to have any fun. That was when she started paying attention to their behavior.   
  
Rose had had nightmares every night since their incident with the sun, though her screams weren’t as horrible and didn’t last as long as they had that first night. The Doctor’s doing no doubt. Sometimes she went to check on them but the door was always closed and when she didn’t hear anything further from the room, she’d creep back to hers and try to fall back to sleep.   
  
Apart from cuddling with each other, neither the Doctor nor Rose was doing anything to keep themselves warm. When they went out in the winter, Rose barely wore enough to keep her warm, usually just a jacket and gloves, maybe a scarf. Sometimes in autumn or early spring she barely wore a windbreaker.   
  
Inside the TARDIS she was always wearing shorts and a short-sleeved or sleeveless shirt. She didn’t wear socks, either. The Doctor shucked his coat and jacket the moment they boarded the TARDIS. More than once he removed his dress shirt as well. Usually when the three of them sat on the couch she’d have to fight for every inch of the afghan but now they let her have the whole thing without protest. Neither of them cooked hot meals and when Martha did they both waited for their plates to cool for several minutes before beginning to eat. Same with their tea.   
  
Unless she was mistaken, the inside of the TARDIS was chillier as well, accompanied by a cool breeze in the hallways. The pool stayed an icy cavern and the hot tub and sauna rooms disappeared entirely. The freezer had an unusual amount of popsicles near the front. None of the fireplaces were lit. That bothered Martha after another day of nothing but snow and she retreated to the corner of the library with a grand fireplace and magnificently ornate hearth. She convinced the TARDIS to light it and within a few minutes she was dozing in the kind of warmth that only could be felt in front of a real fire.  
  
Rose came to find her and stopped dead when she saw the roaring fire. Martha waited for her to finish what she was saying and turned around when she didn’t. Rose’s eyes were wide and fixed on the fire. She bolted, leaving Martha startled and concerned. She thought back over the days since their scare on the spaceship and realized this was something else out of the ordinary she’d failed to identify before now. On their excursions the pair of them avoided the fireplaces and bonfires alike. They’d even flinched at candles.  
  
“So where are we going today?” she asked the next morning, trying to be nonchalant about her suspicious. They were having pancakes. Martha was already chowing down but Rose and the Doctor had yet to do anything except cut theirs up.  
  
“The Solstice Festival on Ether,” he replied, prodding at his food with the tip of his finger to test the temperature.   
  
“And I’m guessing it’s not for the summer solstice.”   
  
“Nope.”  
  
She sighed and stabbed a piece of pancake with her fork, shoving it into her mouth. The Doctor poked his food again and Martha saw the two of them exchange a swift glance. Then Rose picked up her fork and started to eat. The Doctor joined in a minute later. Martha raised her eyebrows but chose not to comment.   
  
“Can’t we go somewhere warm?” she asked.  
  
The Doctor stopped with the fork halfway to his mouth. “But Etheran Winter Solstice Festival is one of the best! And it occurs for ninety-nine percent of their civilized history so even if I get the years wrong we won’t miss it! There’s tobogganing, races, games, music, plays, good food–if you want something warm, Martha, they make delicious hot cider I’m sure you’ll enjoy.”  
  
“Do they have a great Summer Solstice Festival?”  
  
“Well, yes…”  
  
“Why can’t we go there instead?” She raised her eyebrows pointedly and waited. Her suspicions were confirmed when he floundered for an excuse.   
  
“What’s wrong with a winter festival?” Rose demanded.  
  
“Nothing,” she said, “Except I’m getting sick of freezing my arse off every day. I haven’t seen proper sunlight since–since, well.” she didn’t outright say it and she could tell they were both grateful. This wasn’t a battle she couldn’t win over breakfast, especially when she was outnumbered two to one. So she heaved a sigh, cleaned her plate, and asked what the dress was for the festival.  
  
She headed up to the wardrobe on her own. Rose joined her five minutes later. Normally they would laugh and chat as they selected their attire, comparing, giving suggestions, and making the same old jokes about the Doctor and his suit. There was none of that. The silence between them was heavy and to Martha it screamed of everything that had been wrong lately  
  
Rose emerged from the changing area wearing a long sleeved powder blue gown with white fur trim. She turned around in front of the mirror to see herself and this was usually the point where Martha chimed in with a ‘yay’ or ‘nay.’  
  
Instead she asked, “Are you alright?”  
  
Rose looked at her in the mirror. “I’m fine.”  
  
“You’re really not, though.” She placed a deep blue dress back on the rack and kept looking. “I’m not blind.”  
  
The muscle in her jaw twitched but she would no longer meet her gaze. “I told you I’m fine.”  
  
“You’ve not been fine for nearly two weeks,” she argued. “I’m a doctor. I can tell these things.”  
  
“Good for you.”  
  
Martha sighed. “Please don’t start acting like him. I only want to help.”  
  
Rose rounded on her. “You wanna help? Then butt out.” With that, she stormed out of the wardrobe.   
  
Martha didn’t go with them to the festival. The hum of the TARDIS changed when they returned many hours later but she didn’t see them until the following morning. That was when she realized Rose hadn’t woken up screaming. That was good, right?  
  
Perhaps not.   
  
Another week of cold, cloudy days, and frequent nighttime adventures went by. The Doctor seemed to be improving. He left his Oxfords on and sometimes his jacket. He still wouldn’t eat hot meals, though. The same could not be said for Rose. She no longer screamed in the night but the more Martha saw her, the more she became certain that it was because she wasn’t sleeping well enough to even dream. If she was even sleeping at all. With that realization came another: this had to stop.   
  
She still wasn’t entirely sure what had happened, but from what she’d seen and the brief explanation she’d been provided, she knew the sun had been highly telepathic and very strong. It had broken through their mental barriers and invaded their minds, took over their bodies, and played with them like dolls.  
  
The sun had been living in them, burning their insides and razing through their minds. Of course they would feel violated. Their minds were associating heat with the fear and pain they’d felt as they were taken over. The cold was comfort. The only warmth they allowed themselves was each other (safe) and some protection against the elements (necessary). They didn’t want to go somewhere where they couldn’t control the amount of heat they were exposed to.   
  
She felt horrible for not realizing it straight off. She was a doctor, for God’s sake–a good and proper doctor now, and she was recognized as such on seven planets and five times in Earth history. She’d seen more than her peers ever would, she’d helped entire civilizations recover from the brink of disaster. She didn’t need a test to tell her she was a doctor, life and experience had done that. The eyes and lips of those she’d saved had done that.  
  
Well, now she had two more patients. This seemed more like a job for a psychiatrist, but she didn’t know any psychiatrists that would believe her, she would have to do her best on her own. Because even though the Doctor was getting better on his own she wasn’t entirely sure he would be very helpful.   
  
So the first thing she did was to try and recruit the TARDIS. She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to make contact on her own as she usually had Rose around to make her case, but she needn’t have worried. The ship was obviously concerned for them and after just a few seconds of talking aloud and hoping for a response, she felt the ship touch the back of her mind. It startled her at first. The TARDIS had never made such blatant contact with her before. It was usually just a brush of emotion, maybe a faint image. What she felt this time was distress that made her insides curl and love so powerful she felt warm.  
  
She didn’t know where the knowledge came from but she knew it was how the TARDIS felt for Rose and the Doctor. The concern was easy to identify, it was what she’d always imagined it would feel like when she was a mother worrying about her children. It was the love she couldn’t quite describe. Somewhere between a mother’s and a lover’s. Were it coming from anywhere else she wouldn’t believe it, but it somehow made perfect sense. That was when Martha realized exactly how _alive_ the TARDIS really was. She loved them and their suffering was painful to her–and she was bonded to them both in such a way that the pain was felt emotionally and physically. Well, as physical as anything could be for the ship.   
  
For a few minutes, alone in her room, Martha felt and watched what the ship was saying. Some of it she understood, some of it she didn’t. She didn’t think she’d ever be as attuned to the ship as the Doctor or Rose, not unless the ship started talking to her like this daily, which she doubted. This was a special circumstance. The TARDIS had been trying her best to comfort them but there was only so much she could do on her own. So, Martha came up with a plan and the TARDIS responded by flicking the lights for yes or no, and sending images when she wanted to add her own suggestions. It was like charades, in a way.  
  
When they were done planning, before withdrawing from their connection, the TARDIS nuzzled her mind. She felt the love the ship had for her, like a friend or perhaps a close aunt, and her gratitude.   
  
The TARDIS started things off by slowly warming her interior back to normal temperature over a period of several days.   
  
On the second day she made eggs for breakfast. Rose tried to politely refuse and went in search of cereal, except the cabinets were completely and utterly void of anything that didn’t have to be served hot. Neither she nor the Doctor was impressed.   
  
“I guess you’ll just have to eat the eggs,” she said, setting their plates on the table. “Come on, while they’re still nice and warm.”  
  
They sat down at the table with her and, as expected, the Doctor started prodding lightly at his food. Martha pointed at him severely with her fork. “There is nothing wrong with these eggs. They’re cool enough to not burn your mouth. Go on.”  
  
The Doctor frowned at her. The TARDIS prodded the back of her mind, urging her to be gentle.   
  
“How about this: take a few bites while they’re warm and then you can wait until it’s cooler if you want.”  
  
Rose and the Doctor looked at each other for a few seconds and then Rose picked up her fork, skewered a bit of egg, and slowly brought it up to her mouth. She hesitated with the fork a precarious few centimeters away and then gingerly slipped it into her mouth. She made a face that would’ve been funny in any other situation–half surprised, half pained, half terrified–chewed, and then swallowed. She set the fork down and did not touch her food for several minutes. The Doctor managed three bites before he, too, put his fork down.  
  
They did it again at dinner. This time Rose managed two bites of spaghetti before dropping her fork and waiting for it to cool.   
  
For the next few days, the TARDIS refused to provide any cold food except for milk to anyone but Martha. Of course this meant that she had to make most of their meals but she was an excellent cook and the TARDIS had a fair few cookbooks in her library. It was right around then that the Doctor started to realize she was up to something. He knew a partnership when he saw one.  
  
One night when Rose was actually sleeping, he decided he wanted a snack and carefully slipped out of her grip and made his way to the kitchen. He expected his ship to play nice, it was only a snack after all, but once again he found the cupboards bare of snack foods and he didn’t feel like cooking anything. A banana, he decided. That shouldn’t be too much trouble.  
  
But the TARDIS outright refused. Slamming the doors and drawers and flickering the lights in response to his pleading. Okay, not a banana. Any fruit would do. He opened a cabinet and she slammed it shut again. He offered maintenance work he’d been putting off and not to use the mallet for a week. A month. He’d take her to Cardiff for a nice meal on the rift. Finally, it seemed she had decided to accept his offer, and one of the cabinet doors opened slowly.  
  
He walked over to it eagerly and looked inside. A single pear sat waiting.  
  
“Oh, come on, that’s not fair!” he protested.  
  
The lights flickered. Take it or leave it.   
  
He went back to Rose’s room empty-handed.   
  
When he got there he found her shuddering, a soft wail ripping itself from her throat. He immediately climbed into bed next to her and cupped her face in his hands. The difference in their body temperatures helped to soothe her in the burning terrors of her subconscious. This was the first time she’d stayed asleep long enough to dream in days and he was going to do his best to help her get the rest her body needed. She wasn’t a Time Lord. She couldn’t go without sleep like he could.   
  
And thank Rassilon that he didn’t have to sleep often. Normally when he did sleep her presence was enough to keep the monsters in his mind at bay. But as distressed as she was in her sleeping state he wasn’t entirely sure that trying to sleep around her wouldn’t do more harm than good.  
  
Touching his fingers to her temples, he whispered into her mind. _My Rose, I’m here. You’re safe. Nothing can harm you._  
  
He hadn’t told her he did this for her ever every time she managed to sleep. He wasn’t sure what she’d think of him entering her mind even as faintly as he did. But he couldn’t regret his actions, not when they were helping her.  
  
The next evening he decided he was going to confront Martha. Rose was starting to smell a bit funny in a way that was bothering him and he was hesitant to leave her alone for too long. So he waited until she was in the shower then he sought Martha out.   
  
He found her in the fire room. Interesting room that one–never the same twice, but it always had a fire in it. Sometimes a fireplace, sometimes a fire pit–one time it was empty and white except for a ring of fire around the edge of the room. It looked like he’d walked into one of the TARDIS gardens. There were some trees–Earth in origin, most likely Douglas Firs but he’d have to have a taste to be sure–grass on the ground, and a single log in front of a roaring bonfire. He could feel the heat from the doorway and he thought of orange spacesuits, pain, and terrified rage.  
  
He gritted his teeth and stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. Martha looked up and smiled.   
  
“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.  
  
Her smile melted away. “Sorry, should I have invited you guys? Didn’t think you’d want to join me, to be honest. I was gonna make s’mores. Want one?”  
  
“No, thank you.”  
  
“Have a seat,” she offered and then arched her eyebrows.   
  
Martha didn’t miss the way his eyes flicked to the fire and scooted over, patting the free space beside her. “If you want to talk you’ll have to come over here. I’m not craning my neck like that.”  
  
She heard him sigh and listened to the grass crunching underneath his feet as he made his way over to the log. He sat down next to her and spoke without preamble. “What are you two playing at? You and the TARDIS. Don’t think we haven’t noticed.”  
  
“I would be surprised if you hadn’t.” Martha replied smoothly. He looked at her expectantly. “You want to know why we’re working together? Ever since we dealt with that sun you two have scared of heat. Don’t think we haven’t noticed.”  
  
“You don’t understand.”  
  
“No, you’re right, I don’t. I don’t know what it’s like to be violated like that–and I never want to–but I do know that this isn’t healthy for either of you. Emotionally and physically.”  
  
She reached for his hand and grasped it firmly in hers. “We’re worried about you, me and the TARDIS. That’s why. I didn’t realize what was going on at first, but she did, and when she realized I wanted to help she…she spoke to me. She’s never done that before. It wasn’t just her messin’ with the lights, I could actually feel her in my mind, and she was sending me pictures. And I felt…I felt how she feels. She loves you both. I don’t even know if you realize how much. I don’t even know how to properly describe it, but I felt it, and we understood each other.”  
  
He said nothing.  
  
“You’ve been shying away from anything really hot. It’s because of how it felt, isn’t it? It was hot?”  
  
“That’s an understatement. It was like my blood had been turned to magma. It wasn’t as bad for Rose, but…”  
  
Martha nearly shuddered. “It doesn’t matter if she didn’t have it as bad. She’s not doing good, Doctor, surely you can see it?”  
  
“She…no, but she–she is. She’s eating more warm food every meal, she’s gone outside in broad daylight, and she’s even wearing t-shirts around the TARDIS…” he trailed off uncertainly.   
  
“When was the last time she had a good night’s sleep?”  
  
“She got five hours last night,” he said quietly after a moment. “That’s the most she’s had in days.”  
  
“I knew it. Doctor, what’s wrong with you? That should’ve been your first and last clue. You can’t keep this up. Well, maybe you could, but she can’t. It’s not healthy, mentally or physically. She could get sick. This has got to stop. Tomorrow we’re going to somewhere where it’s almost summer and you’re both going to suck up copious amounts of Vitamin D.”  
  
“But–”  
  
“I’m not asking to go to the Sahara or anything, just somewhere warm. Do you think you can manage that?”  
  
He stared at her for a long minute and then nodded slowly.  
  
She smiled. “Once the TARDIS feels that you’re doing better, you can have your bananas back. In fact, I’ll make you a banana milkshake.”   
  
But, alas, their warm day was not to be. Rose had woken up sick.   
  
The Doctor mentioned that she’d smelt odd recently and said that he should have realized what it meant. She could tell he was already kicking himself over it, but Martha still spent a good few minutes scolding both of them for their disregards to Rose’s health before diagnosing her with a cold. Unfortunately, the Doctor didn’t have a cure for the common cold. Not one that would work on a human from the 21st century.   
  
So she dragged him to the kitchen to make the tea while she cooked chicken and noodles. He recommended a few alien spices they had that were good for helping the human immune system. While the soup was cooking, he took her to the infirmary and gave her a quick injection that should keep her from catching what Rose had. He also located some medicine that would help Rose’s symptoms and brought it to her with breakfast.   
  
The three of them spent the day in the library, watching Disney movies and listening to the Doctor read aloud. They allowed Martha to tuck them under a thick quilt and Rose seemed to enjoy the warmth more than she had for nearly four weeks. She ended up sleeping most of the day, tucked under the Doctor’s arm and curled against his chest.   
  
The next day Rose wasn’t any better, if anything she was worse. She was starting to run a fever and her coughs were getting thicker. But apparently the TARDIS needed some maintenance so the Doctor had to spend hours in the console room, though the idea seemed to pain him. Martha sat with Rose in the library during that time. Just like the previous day, Rose spent a lot of time napping so Martha kept herself entertained by reading and watching alien telly. When Rose started to hack up mucus Martha moved a trashcan in front of the couch for her and they kept a water bottle on the table.  
  
Sometime after lunch while Rose was sound asleep at the other end of the couch, she felt the telltale jolt of the TARDIS landing. Rose didn’t even stir. Martha was surprised. The Doctor had never managed to land them that smoothly. The TARDIS must have taken extra care for Rose’s sake.   
  
The Doctor turned up a few minutes later and explained he needed to go out for parts. He shouldn’t be longer than a few hours, but in the event he was needed, he had Rose’s phone in his pocket.  
  
“Don’t leave the ship unless you have to. The environment isn’t hostile, but there’s a bit too much carbon dioxide in the air for your lungs to handle. There are oxygen masks around here somewhere, but I don’t think you’ll have to worry. The natives are friendly and used to contact with many species.”  
  
He asked her to tell Rose where he’d gone if she woke up before he got back, but he didn’t expect to be gone that long. He knelt by her side and kissed her cheek, brushing her hair out of her face, smiled at Martha, and then left.  
  
Rose woke up about two hours after he left and she was upset that he hadn’t said goodbye. It always made her nervous when he went somewhere she couldn’t without depending on suit or oxygen mask to survive. Martha brought her some more soup. Rose made a face at it and only ended up taking a few bite because her stomach was feeling funny.  
  
A few minutes later she said she needed to use the bathroom so Martha helped her to her feet. Rose swayed back and forth like she was dizzy for a moment and then her eyes widened in dread. She jerked out of Martha’s grip and dropped to her knees in front of the trash can just seconds before she threw up. When she was done, she moaned softly and sagged against the couch.   
  
Martha sat next to her, rubbing her back soothingly. Rose was awfully pale and she felt hotter than earlier. She threw up again and then Martha decided it was time to move her to the infirmary. She helped Rose to her feet and let her use her for support as they walked out of the library. The TARDIS had already rearranged the rooms so the infirmary, Rose’s room, the library, and the kitchen were all in the same hallway.  
  
The usual examination table had been swapped for a 21st century hospital bed, and after a stop in the bathroom, she helped Rose into it and adjusted the back so he was sitting up. She then quickly located a plastic bin she could hook onto the side of the bed. Martha found a warm blanket and a fluffy pillow in a cupboard and got Rose all tucked in. Then she found a thermometer and went to get her some more water while they waited. It ended up taking three tries to get an accurate reading since Rose kept coughing so much.  
  
“I’m cold,” Rose said as Martha took the thermometer.   
  
“Thirty-eight point three degrees,” she murmured. “You were thirty-seven seven earlier.”  
  
Rose sipped gratefully at the water, swishing it around her mouth, and spat into the bin. “Ugh, tastes horrible.” She took another drink, spat it out, then slowly drank the rest. “Are you gonna call the Doctor?”  
  
“If he’s not back soon, yes. In the mean time, I may not be the Doctor, but I am a doctor. I know what I’m doing.”  
  
Rose smiled and started coughing and hacking again.   
  
Martha washed off the thermometer then went looking for a stethoscope and the digital blood pressure monitor the Doctor said he had around here somewhere. She fastened it around Rose’s wrist. The results were slightly lower than she’d have liked to see. She listened to Rose’s heart and her breathing. Her lungs sounded full which explained why Rose was coughing up so much.   
  
“Are you having any difficult breathing?” she asked as she listened.  
  
“A bit.”  
  
“Hmm.” She muttered. She was starting to get a good idea what was going on. She hoped she was wrong.   
  
She went to get dinner for herself and told Rose to either have the TARDIS get her attention if she needed anything. She didn’t feel like making anything special so she just heated up some chicken nuggets, squirted some honey on the plate to dip them in, and set the plate on a tray along with a glass of milk, some carrots, two popsicles, and an empty two-liter bottle that she filled with water. Rose had nearly fallen asleep by the time she returned with a tray. She lifted her head blearily and was roused fully from her doze by a round of coughing.  
  
“I brought you some popsicles.” Martha said when Rose was relaxed again. “You probably shouldn’t be eating solids for the time being but you need to stay hydrated. Grape or cherry?”  
  
“Grape.”  
  
She unwrapped a grape Popsicle and handed it to Rose, then pulled up a chair and ate beside her.   
  
“Thank you,” Rose said. “You didn’t have to do this.”  
  
“Yes I did,” she retorted immediately. “Wouldn’t be much of a doctor or a friend otherwise.”  
  
Rose laughed weakly and sucked on the Popsicle for another minute then took a sip of water. Martha kept a careful eye on her but tried to not make her concern overly obvious. Rose didn’t feel like eating the other Popsicle, which Martha promised her was fine.   
  
“Go back to sleep,” she instructed. “I’ll give him a call and wait with you until he gets back.”  
  
She finished her dinner then returned to the kitchen and put the Popsicle away and washed her dishes. She retrieved her phone from her room and called the Doctor on the way back to the infirmary. Except he didn’t answer. She called back three times but each time she got voicemail. She left him a message the last time, calmly informing him that Rose was getting worse and he needed to get his Time Lord behind back to the ship.   
  
Maybe he just wasn’t in a position to answer. She hoped that was all it was.   
  
She stood silently over the bed and watched Rose sleep while she ran over a list of Rose’s symptoms again. They all pointed to pneumonia. She really hoped it wasn’t but it would probably do to have the Doctor find her some sort of antibiotic tomorrow. Whatever was wrong with her, they obviously didn’t have a cure onboard or else she was sure the TARDIS would have made it visible by now. She could control where things appeared, but to do so she had to first have it onboard, she couldn’t just pull things out of time. Martha wished she could find something for Rose herself, but all the labels were in Gallifreyan and the TARDIS refused to translate the Doctor’s native language. Even for Rose. She’d asked.  
  
Rose’s sleep was punctuated by coughs every so often but nothing severe enough to wake her up.   
  
Curled up in the plush chair near the wall with her phone clenched in her hands, Martha kept vigil for hours. She grew increasingly worried as more time passed. She called the Doctor four times but he never picked up. She found a thermometer strip and placed it across Rose’s forehead. She about had a heart attack when she saw the results until she realized it was Fahrenheit, not Celsius. Must’ve been an American invention.  
  
Martha did the math in her head and sighed. Thirty-eight point nine. She was getting worse. And she was so pale.  
  
Rose wrinkled her nose and her head tossed to the side. Suddenly the scene before her seemed oddly familiar. She had to think about it for a minute, but then she recognized an image from days ago when she and the TARDIS were talking. At the time she’d thought it was merely a warning of what could happen, now she realized it was a warning of what was going to happen.  
  
Rose woke up around midnight and had a fierce coughing fit about half a minute later. Martha held her hair back as she hacked up more mucus into the bin and then she hugged her as she cried and got her some water to wash her mouth out. Rose asked where the Doctor was. Martha lied and said he was on his way back and held Rose’s hand as she fell back to sleep.  
  
Damn them both, they should have been more careful, especially the Doctor. How could he have forgotten that temperature affected human immune systems? It was only too easy for Rose to pick up the bacteria.   
  
A round of loud, harsh coughing woke her sometime later. Martha sat up in the chair and looked around in alarm. It took her a second to remember where she was and why she was there but then she sighed and rubbed her eyes. She yawned and checked her watch–fourteen past ten in the morning, London time. Rose was sitting up in bed, holding her chest and wiping her eyes.  
  
“Where’s the Doctor?” she demanded as soon as she caught her breath.   
  
She opened her mouth to lie but she knew the TARDIS would probably correct her and Rose would want to see him. “I…don’t know.”   
  
“You said he was on his way back.”  
  
“I lied. I didn’t want you to worry.”  
  
“I asked the TARDIS. She says he’s not onboard.”  
  
Martha bit her lip. “Right, well, it’s been over twelve hours.”  
  
“Something’s wrong.” Rose tossed the covers aside. “We have to–to–” she was cut off by another round of coughing and she leaned over the basin, spitting into it.   
  
“You’re not going anywhere.” Martha ordered, rushing over to the bed, and pushed Rose’s legs right back into place. “Get back under the covers right now and hold still.”  
  
She placed the thermometer strip on Rose’s forehead again and retrieved the stethoscope from the counter. She glanced up at the strip, did the math, and sucked in a sharp breath. Rose was burning a thirty-nine point nine. Not good. Definitely, not good. Her lungs were still full and her breathing was raspy. Even worse. She didn’t do a good job of schooling her features.  
  
“What’s wrong with me?”  
  
She pursed her lips. “How long has it been since you’ve felt a hundred percent? No, wait, let me rephrase that because I know you haven’t been sleeping. When did you start to feel ill?”  
  
“Um…about four days, I guess.”  
  
“And five days ago we were in winter 1932 in Canada. You could’ve picked it up there or the day before. That’s enough time. I think you may have pneumonia.”  
  
Rose’s eyes widened and what color was left in her face vanished.   
  
“I can’t treat you until I know for sure and everything’s in Gallifreyan.” She sighed, gritting her teeth. There was nothing else for it. “I’m going to have to go after him.”


	29. Bartering for Freedom

Martha had adrenaline buzzing through her while she got ready to go after the Doctor. She wasn’t sure what kind of environment she’d face out there but she thought it would be best to be prepared. She put on a pair of jeans and a pair study black boots she found in the wardrobe plus a black short-sleeve shirt and her red leather jacket. She brushed her hair back into a bun and tucked her TARDIS key in her pocket. She felt like she was dressing for battle.   
  
For all she know she could be heading into one. The Doctor was many things, but he was not careless enough to stay out this long when Rose was sick. Something was keeping him away. She hoped it was only law enforcement and not something worse, something that would take a rescue mission. She couldn’t do something like that on her own and Rose was in no condition to help. She’d need to recover some first and to do that she needed medicine.   
  
Martha grabbed a bag she’d found weeks before in the wardrobe that must have belonged to another Time Lord (Lady?) at one time because it was bigger on the inside. She went around her room looking for anything valuable she could use to trade for medicine or medical aid if it came to that. She did a quick search of the wardrobe as well and the TARDIS willingly led her to a section of clothes that were made with fine fabrics and adorned in gems. She took one dress and one jacket and lowered them into her bag on their hangers, hooking them on a pouch and shut her bag.   
  
Next she went to the kitchen and got herself a bowl of cereal and another grape Popsicle for Rose. She ate at Rose’s bedside and explained the plan.  
  
“If we’re near a town or something I’ll ask around and then I’ll try the police–he may have been arrested or something.”  
  
Rose smiled at that.  
  
“If not, we’ll have to wait until you’re better before we can do anything. But I’ve got some stuff in my bag I can barter with if it comes to that. I just hope they’re civilized enough to have antibiotics.”  
  
“And if they’re not?”  
  
“There’s always herbal remedies, but let’s hope for antibiotics, yeah?”  
  
After breakfast, Martha brought out a ventilator. It was a nice sleek box from the 23rd century and could hook onto the side of the bed. “Some patients with pneumonia can find it difficult to breathe,” she explained as she set the mask where could grab it quickly if she had to. She didn’t think Rose’s case was that bad, but it was better to be safe than sorry. “If you need to, just press the green button and it’ll turn on.”  
  
“Okay,” she said.  
  
“Okay.” Martha smiled tightly and patted her hand. There was a light thump on the counter and she looked up. It was a book. She went to retrieve it. “Looks like the TARDIS has provided entertainment.”   
  
“What’s it called?”  
  
“ _The Fault in Our Stars_.”   
  
Rose shook her head. “Never heard of it.”   
  
“Me neither.” Martha opened the cover and looked at the publication date. “2012. That explains it. Well, here you are, then. Something to keep you occupied until you fall asleep.”   
  
Rose accepted the book and turned it over to read the back cover.   
  
“I’ll see you when I get back.” Martha said.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“Any time.”   
  
She adjusted Rose’s covers once more and left the infirmary.   
  
In the console room, the TARDIS had an oxygen mask and two small oxygen packs and waiting. Each one had a two-hour battery life, which would hopefully be enough. The mask covered her entire face, connected to the filter by a single tube. She clipped one filter to each side of her belt, adjusted her jacket and bag, then headed for the door. She set her watch to go off in an hour and fifty-five minutes. After that if she hadn’t reached any form of civilization she’d have to head back to the TARDIS.  
  
She took a deep breath and pulled the door open. Outside the air looked thick, like it was full of fog, except there was perfect visibility. There was no grass on the ground so she figured they were on some sort of asteroid or maybe a moon and she felt warmth filtering through the TARDIS’s protective shields.  
  
“Take care of her,” she ordered the ship. “And if worst comes to worse, take her to Sarah Jane.”   
  
She reached down and switched the pack on and took a deep breath. She felt the cool, filtered air flow through her nose and as she exhaled she stepped out of the TARDIS. She pulled the door shut behind her and circled the TARDIS to get a look of the land. Off to the right, she could see something like a town about two miles away and she sighed in relief. That had to be where he’d gone. She checked the pack’s levels once more and then set off at a jog.  
  
Months with the Doctor had given her stamina she didn’t know she was capable of. She didn’t flat out run to conserve her oxygen but she was able to keep at a brisk jog and her breathing stayed steady.   
  
The sky was a funny shade of blue, hinging towards green. She supposed it had to do with the atmospheric composition. There were no clouds, either, and the barren land suggested there wasn’t much, if any, precipitation here. But the fact there was a settlement meant this bit of space rock had a relatively stable orbit around a star. Unless this was just a bad part of the planet, the locals were probably colonists or their descendants, which meant they’re home world had been advanced enough for space travel. They probably would have developed some sort of antibiotics and sent them with the brave pioneers.   
  
It took her about ten minutes to reach the town. She estimated there were several thousand people living there. Although the word ‘people’ might be a bit loose. The citizens all seemed to be of the same species: humanoids with varying shades of olive and dark skin and silvery or black hair. They all eyed Martha with surprise and a hint of suspicion. Some with more than just a bit. She matched their physical features well enough, but the town was so small they probably all knew each other and she was obviously an outsider with that mask on her face.  
  
She wandered into the mercantile district, figuring this would be where the Doctor would have come. The Doctor said if you wanted to know about anything going on around a town like this to try the market first. Isolated as they were, everyone had to come through here once every few days at least for supplies.  
  
“And who might you be?”  
  
Martha turned around. A slim olive-skinned with silver hair was staring straight at her from the doorway of a pub. She pointed to herself hesitantly and the woman nodded.  
  
“I-I’m Martha,” she said and walked towards her. “You?”  
  
“Per’rit.”   
  
“…Parrot?”  
  
“Per’r _i_ t,” she corrected with a frown. “It’s not the right day for a convoy to come through and no one on this moon needs a breathing system to walk around in the open. So who are you?”  
  
“I’m looking for someone, a friend of mine. I think he might have come to this town yesterday.”  
  
“Tall, skinny, pale man in a brown coat?”  
  
“Yes!” She exhaled in relief. “Oh my God, where is he?”  
  
Per’rit looked her up and down slowly, rubbing her lips together. “You’re not here for trouble, are you?”  
  
“No, honestly, no, and neither was he.”  
  
“Oh, really? He tried to steal several hundred kirtz worth of parts from Kux. Sounds like trouble if you ask me.”  
  
“Oh that bloody alien.” Martha seethed. “Please tell me he was arrested and not shot or something.”  
  
“No, he wasn’t shot.”  
  
“Well, that’s something. Really, he’s not a bad man, he must’ve just forgotten to bring money when he left the ship. Our friend is sick and he tends to not think very rationally when she’s hurt.”  
  
Per’rit looked worried. “Sick? How sick?”  
  
“To be honest, very. She could die.”  
  
“We have two physicians here. If she’s in danger of dying, they’d be willing to treat her with little compensation.”  
  
“That won’t work.” Martha tapped the oxygen mask. “She and I are the same species and we can’t breathe the air here. So it’s probably safe to assume your people couldn’t breathe inside our ship.”  
  
Per’rit nodded slowly. “Your friend was arrested, you’ll find him at the lockup. Turn around and take a left. Turn right on Er’rs street and a left on Sopi. It’s the big green building, you can’t miss it.”  
  
“Thank you, _thank you_.” Martha smiled at her gratefully and ran back they way she’d come.  
  
Ignoring the looks she was getting, Martha raced through the town, following the directions Per’rit had given her. She spotted the deep green building from several streets over and laughed in relief when she reached the door. She took a moment to catch her breath then pulled the door open and stepped inside.   
  
It looked like the waiting room in a small office. The walls were pastel blue, several pictures hung from them in wooden frames. A few chairs were placed along one wall, a plump woman sat in one, reading a magazine. A simple reception desk occupied most of the space, managed by a dark-skinned man with a shock of silver hair. He looked up when she entered and his eyebrows shot towards his hairline.  
  
“What in the name of Is’sara are you wearing, child?” he demanded.  
  
“I am not child, thank you.” she rested her hands on the desk. “I’m here for a friend of mine; I was told he was arrested yesterday. Tall skinny bloke, pale skin, wild brown hair, brown coat, big gob–apparently he tried to steal something.”  
  
“Ah.” The man made a face. “Him, yes.” He held up a small black box and pressed a series of numbers. An image shot up from the tiny little dome on the top. The man touched the corner of the hologram screen and a series of information in a thing, squiggly language scrolled past.   
  
Hologram screens were always slow in translating. It was quite annoying sometimes.   
  
“Can you tell me his real name? He’s only given us his alias.”  
  
“His name is the Doctor.”  
  
“Oh, that’s actually his name? All right, he’s been charged with theft and resisting arrest. The sentence is three weeks in prison and then he will have to work to pay back half the cost of what he stole. It will be a few months,” he added for her benefit.   
  
“Oh, no, no, no, no. We can’t wait a few months. We can’t even wait a few weeks for his sentence to be up.” She reached up to put her hands over her face but they connected with the front of her mask instead. “You don’t understand he has to come back today. Isn’t there _anything_ we can do?”  
  
The man lifted his eyebrows and considered her for a moment. “What is your name, species, and planet of origin?”  
  
“Martha Jones, human, Earth–um, I mean, Sol 3.”   
  
“Very well, have a seat please. I’ll be back.” He gestured to the chairs along the wall.  
  
She walked over to the chairs and sank down into one. The woman with the magazine was staring at her. Martha looked up for a moment and wondered if she could see how weary she was. She turned away and put her head in her hands, which was more difficult than it sounded with that mask on her face. She waited silently for several minutes. That woman kept sneaking glances at her, staring openly when Martha checked the levels on her oxygen pack.   
  
A few more silent minutes passed and then the door on the opposite wall opened.   
  
The man returned with another officer. He was tall with black hair and skin darker than hers, wearing the same brown uniform as the other man. He looked severe and she was genuinely worried for her safety for a moment.   
  
But then his eyes found her, took in her appearance, and he smiled friendlily at her. “Martha Jones? My name is Tyrin. You’re here about our alien thief.”  
  
She stood up. “Yes, I am.”  
  
“Might I ask what your relation to him is?”  
  
“We…we’re just travellers. Friends.”  
  
He sighed. “Well, that’s unfortunate.”  
  
“Why?” she asked.  
  
“There was a process we could have gone through, but you have to be related to the accused to sign the release papers.”  
  
“What about married couples?”  
  
The officer was not amused. “If you’re thinking of marrying him just to get him out, nice try, but it’s been done before.”  
  
“Oh, no, not me, I meant–” She stopped abruptly, an idea forming. She let out a long sigh. “I didn’t mean me. He’s already married. Her name’s Rose. I’m their friend and I travel with them. Rose is back on our ship right now. When he didn’t come back yesterday she sent me to find him.”  
  
“Well, in that case, if you return to your ship and bring her here, I’m sure we can get this sorted quickly.”  
  
“I can’t. Rose would’ve come with me if she could’ve. She’s very sick and I’m a physician so I’ve been doing my best to take care of her, but we don’t have anything on board that can help her that I know of. All the labels are written in the Doctor’s native language and I can’t read it. We’ve never been in a position before where he wasn’t able to translate for me.”  
  
Tyrin considered her for a moment. “What is she ill with?”  
  
“Pneumonia.”  
  
He shook his head. “I don’t know of any such thing.”  
  
“It’s an upper-respiratory infection that can make us very sick. She can’t make the trip here and the Doctor was repairing our ship–that’s why he tried to take the parts–so we can’t move any closer. Please, I know you’ve got no reason to believe me, but you’ve got to.”  
  
“I believe you. You don’t look like a liar, Martha.” he sighed. “But the law is the law. Unless his wife or some other relative is here to negotiate for his freedom and sign the papers we cannot do anything. Does he have any kin you can contact?”  
  
“No, we’re all he has.”  
  
“Then, I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do. But if you can pay off his debt he will not have to work to pay it back himself. In which case he will be freed in three weeks time.”  
  
“Don’t you understand? We don’t have three weeks!” she shouted. Tyrin looked surprised. The man behind the desk was watching her intently. She sucked in a sharp breath through her nose and exhaled slowly. “I’m sorry. You _don’t_ understand. If left untreated, pneumonia can kill. She could die. If she dies, he–oh, I don’t even want to think about it.”  
  
“I can’t change the law,” he told her gently.  
  
“I know, I know… Can I at least see him? Maybe he can tell me if there’s something onboard I can use.”   
  
“Now that,” said Tyrin, “I can do.”   
  
Before they’d let her into the holding area, he made her empty her bag. They were already aware of the whole bigger on the inside thing from the Doctor and she had to hold it upside down and shake to prove there was nothing else hidden within. As she was reloading her bag she explained her plan to use the items to barter for money or medicine if she’d had to. Tyrin seemed to approve of her resourcefulness and told her that the jacket alone could probably fetch more than the debt owed. Add the dress and she’d possibly enough to actually buy the parts he took as well.  
  
“But I do not understand. If you don’t have any currency, why didn’t he think to do this instead of stealing?” he asked. “We are used to bartering here.”  
  
“Because he is one of the smartest men you’ll ever meet but sometimes he overlooks the most basic social etiquettes. It’s like babysitting a wunderkind. I don’t know how Rose puts up with him.”  
  
Tyrin led her back into the holding area, which turned out to be a single hallway of cells. Instead of bars they had walls of glass, probably impenetrable or else the Doctor would already be free, and only two of them appeared to be occupied. The third cell they came to was occupied by none other than the skinny Time Lord himself, wearing a snug black shirt, trousers, and simple black shoes. He was lying on the floor with his legs propped up on the wall and he appeared to be mouthing something.   
  
“What is he doing?” he asked.  
  
Martha shook her head.  
  
Tyrin slid a panel in the glass open. “What are you doing?”   
  
“Well, since you’ve neglected to provide me any sort of entertainment, I’m trying to keep myself occupied. And if you must know, I am currently calculating the total amount of each gas in the air. I’m almost done. Couldn’t you at least give me a game of Sudoku or Kall Cheiks? You do play Kall Cheiks here, don’t you? You’re Kall colonists, after all. Oh, wait. Left pocket of my jacket, there’s a megaminx in there–it’s a dodecahedron with lots of colors–if you could be so kind as to bring it to me.”  
  
“You’ve got a visitor.”  
  
“Oh?” The Doctor craned his neck to see. Quick as a flash, he was off the wall and on his feet. “Well, it’s about time! I expected you to turn up hours ago.”  
  
“You complete _arse_!” she snarled, smacking her palm against the glass. “I swear to God, if you weren’t in there I would slap you into your next life!”  
  
Despite the thick glass protecting him, the Doctor took a step away from the furious female. “Martha, calm down.”  
  
“Don’t you tell me to calm down!” she screeched. “A few hours, you said! We’ve been worried sick!”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“You better be. I just can’t believe you’d go and get yourself arrested knowing full well your wife is sick. …She’s gotten worse, Doctor,” she added quietly.   
  
“Worse,” he repeated flatly. Thankfully, he didn’t question the ‘wife’ bit.  
  
“She’s running a fever of thirty-nine point nine last I checked. She’s been throwing up, pale as a ghost, her blood pressure’s a bit low, her lungs sound full, she’s coughing up mucus, and she’s having trouble breathing.”  
  
Understanding dawned on his face and she saw terror in his eyes. He closed the remaining distance between himself in the glass and leaned his arm against it. “And the TARDIS hasn’t brought anything out?”  
  
“No.”   
  
“Then there’s nothing onboard that would be of use.”  
  
“There might be something,” she countered. “Except all the labels are written in _bloody Gallifreyan_. You were supposed to translate them, remember? This is all your fault, you know. I can’t believe you let her go so long without proper protection against the elements. Now she’s got pneumonia and you’re in jail!”  
  
The Doctor looked at Tyrin. “You’ve got to let me out.”  
  
“No,” he said.   
  
“She could die.”  
  
Tyrin pressed his lips together. “There is only one way you could be released before your sentence is served. Martha has several items with her she could sell to earn the money you owe Kux. However, to negotiate your release and sign the papers, you’d need your wife or any other relative.”  
  
“But Rose can’t make the trip here.” Martha added.   
  
“So we go to her,” the Doctor said. He looked between them. “You and anyone else who needs to be there come to our ship and Martha can bring her outside to you. It’s not far.”  
  
“That would be easier.”   
  
“Well, it’s a bit unorthodox,” Tyrin said after a moment, “but this is a special circumstance. …If Kux can be convinced to make the journey, then I don’t see why not.”  
  
“Except, don’t we still need those parts you filched?” Martha asked.  
  
The Doctor nodded.  
  
“I’ll see what I can do.”   
  
Tyrin would spend the next hour contacting the vendor the Doctor had stolen from about the proposition and, hopefully, getting him to agree to go along with it, as well as organizing the required paperwork, and official transportation. Martha, meanwhile, headed back to the mercantile district to find the shop Tyrin said would be her best bet for trading the items she’d brought.   
  
Luck was on her side. The shop was open and the vendor, a plump dark woman named Yis’si, was more than happy to do business with her. Once she’d explained the oxygen mask and bigger-on-the-inside bag, of course.   
  
She spread the sky blue dress out on the counter first and waited patiently while Yis’si looked it over, checking the design, fabrics, and stitching, as well as the veracity of the many precious stones on the fabric. When the woman was satisfied, Martha pulled out the jacket, which was only a few shades darker than the dress, and Yis’si inspected it as well.   
  
“How much were you wanting?” Yis’si asked as she peered at one of the jacket sleeves. So Martha explained the situation as best she could.   
  
“They’re a bit worn, but this is quality work. I’ll give you nine hundred for both. Do you have anything else?”  
  
Martha nodded and pulled a necklace from her bag. The chain was black and on the end was a single oval ruby nestled into a medallion of ornate gold. It was hers, something she’d found at a market a few weeks prior and she’d be sad to see it go, but she could always make the Doctor take her back for another since it was his fault she had to part with it in the first place.   
  
“My, my, you certainly have many jewels. Is it custom to be decorated in jewels on your planet?”  
  
“In a way. Having a lot is a sign of wealth and class.”  
  
“Are you wealthy, then?”  
  
“No, but the Doctor and Rose have acquired many things on their travels.” She nodded to the dress and jacket. “Though, this one is mine. It’s from Pérsa Major.”  
  
“May I?”  
  
Martha nodded and the woman lifted the pendant in her hand. “It is quite beautiful. Such craftsmanship… Might I suggest you take this down the road? My cousin, Brenan, owns a jewelry store and I think he would be interested in this. You tell him Yis’si said it’s worth at least a thousand and if he tries to talk you any lower, you come back here.”  
  
Yis’si gave her the money for the clothes and sent her on her way with a smile. Up the road, Martha introduced herself to Brenan and explained that she was helping her friend pay off a debt he owed. Then she showed him the necklace and repeated what Yis’si said. He was about to give her 1200 but then she mentioned the planet of origin and he gave her 1500.   
  
With the money safely ensconced in her bag, Martha raced back towards the station. As she ran, she checked her watch to see how she was doing on time. She had about an hour to go, and considering the extra air she’d used up while running, she figured she could make it another forty five minutes before having to switch packs. If Tyrin had been successful then that was more than enough time.   
  
When she arrived back, the receptionist went to fetch Tyrin and her favorite officer emerged from the back not long after.  
  
“Were you successful?”  
  
“2400 kirtz.”  
  
Tyrin smiled. “Very nice. Oh, your Doctor asked me to make sure you were doing alright on air.” He glanced down at the pack. “Am I to understand that little box carries a mix of gasses that your body requires to survive?”  
  
“Yep.”  
  
“And the mix of gasses in our air is toxic to you?”  
  
“Apparently. I trust the Doctor. If he says it’ll kill me then it probably will.”  
  
“That is a shame.” His frown seemed genuine. Oh, dear. “And yet he requires no such mask?”  
  
“He’s a different species than us.”  
  
Use of motor vehicles on this planet was restricted to only official business and their predicament wasn’t deemed important enough to warrant the use of one of the few vehicles in town. So they were walking back to the TARDIS. Martha, Tyrin, another guard, someone from their courts with the papers and the Doctor’s effects, the Doctor himself (in cuffs), and the stout little silver-haired man he’d stolen from. Martha kept four hundred kirtz in reserve just in case something like this happened again and gave the other nineteen hundred to Kux. The extra three hundred was for agreeing to come out to the TARDIS.  
  
“Thank you kindly,” he said, tucking the money into his pocket. “At least some of you have manners.”  
  
“Don’t worry, he’s gonna get a good kick from me later for this.” she promised with a glare in the Doctor’s direction. Then she added, “Once Rose is on the mend.”  
  
“So, his wife is really very ill?”   
  
She nodded. “You’ll believe me once you see her.”  
  
Martha glanced at the Doctor again. His nose was scrunched, his lips stretched into a tight frown. “What’s wrong with you?” she called.  
  
Everyone glanced at him.  
  
“The TARDIS is yelling at me.”  
  
Martha snorted. Everyone else just looked confused. Their confusion only increased when they realized Martha was leading them towards the blue box sitting in the middle of nowhere.   
  
“ _That’s_ your ship?” Kux asked. “I think can see what the problem is: most of it appears to be missing.”  
  
“No, she’s perfectly intact.” the Doctor informed him haughtily. “What you’re seeing is merely a cloaking device.”   
  
Martha sternly ordered them all to stay outside as she unlocked the door. She couldn’t breathe their air so they probably couldn’t breathe hers. The Doctor didn’t agree, but he didn’t disagree either. That was interesting and she wondered to herself if that meant they could breathe inside the TARDIS.   
  
She slipped inside quickly and shut the door before they could see the interior. She flipped the switch on her pack and pulled the mask off, inhaling the familiar scent of the TARDIS. Hooking the top of the mask to the back, she hurried down the halls to the infirmary.  
  
Rose was asleep in the bed, the book lying just off her leg. She was still so pale and when Martha got closer she could hear how raspy her breathing was. Rose’s favorite fluffy pink robe was lying across the chair next to her bed, along with a new t-shirt. She coaxed Rose awake by calling her name and shaking her arm gently. Rose opened her eyes blearily and looked at Martha blankly for several seconds before recognition dawned on her.   
  
“Whasgoinon?”   
  
“You have to get up, Rose. We need your help.”  
  
“Wha?” she yawned.  
  
“The Doctor’s gotten himself arrested. In order to get him released you have to talk to the man he stole from and sign some papers.”  
  
She yawned again, rubbing her eyes, and blinked slowly as this information processed. “They wouldn’t let you do it?”  
  
“No but you can because I told them you’re his wife. Come on, wake up, and put this shirt on. The one your wearing is in a state.”   
  
Rose rubbed her eyes again and took the shirt. Martha rinsed out the bin again and explained as best she could what was going on and why the sheriff and his posse were currently waiting outside the TARDIS. When she was done, Rose had changed into the gray t-shirt and was pushing the covers off her legs. Martha helped her down from the bed and held up the robe for her to slide her arms into. Rose tied it herself and pulled her hair out from the collar. Then almost as an afterthought pulled her TARDIS key out from underneath her shirt, tucking it just under the flap of her robe.  
  
“What’s that for?”  
  
“Just in case they need proof of marriage. I can say this necklace is a wedding band.”  
  
The TARDIS had shifted the hallways again and when they emerged they were literally next door to the console room. Martha smiled and patted the wall. Another mask was waiting on the pilots seat and Martha hooked the tube to her extra oxygen pack. There was nowhere for it to hook onto so she held onto it while Martha slid the mask over her face and switched it on. Rose took a few experimental breaths and nodded then tried to tuck the pack into the pocket of her robe. Martha pulled her mask back on and then walked down the ramp to the doors.  
  
She poked her head out to make sure everyone was still there and slipped outside. “She’s coming. Just getting her oxygen pack situated.”  
  
A moment later Rose stepped out of the TARDIS. She winced when her foot touched the ground and Martha realized too late that she wasn’t wearing shoes, but Rose didn’t complain and pulled the door shut behind her. In her light clothes, with her blonde hair and pasty skin, Rose looked positively alien amongst the dark-skinned natives.  
  
“Hello,” she said, smiling at them. “I think you have something of mine.”  
  
Someone chuckled.   
  
“Rose?” Tyrin asked.   
  
Rose opened her mouth to confirm but ended up doubling over as another round of coughing seized her. The Doctor jerked forward to help her. The bigger officer tried to stop him but the Doctor shoved him off like he was nothing and rushed to Rose’s side. He grabbed onto one of her arms to hold her up and Martha held onto her other arm, rubbing her back soothingly. Rose’s coughing died down and she gasped, her shoulders heaving.   
  
“I’m alright,” she assured them breathlessly. “I’m alright.”  
  
The Doctor turned to the four people watching. If they hadn’t believed Rose was sick before that coughing fit had been enough to seal the deal. “Can we hurry?” he snapped, concern for her making him irritable.   
  
“Bein’ rude again.”  
  
“Yeah, well you can yell at me later.”  
  
“Oh, believe me, I plan to.”   
  
Someone laughed.  
  
The man from the courts explained to Rose what exactly she had to do to finish the process, which included “official” negotiations with Kux, signing some papers and agreeing to take responsibility should something like this occur again, and showing some proof of marriage. She decided to start with that one and reached into her robe and pulled out her TARDIS key.   
  
“The key?” the court man asked doubtfully.  
  
“No, the chain. Since I never take it off, I keep the key on it as well so I don’t lose either.”  
  
“And where his? Tyrin?”  
  
Tyrin shook his head. “We found no necklace in his belongings.”   
  
“Of course not,” the Doctor scoffed. “I was doing maintenance before I left. I took it off for safekeeping. Unless the TARDIS moved it, which she likes to do for some reason, it should be on the nightstand in our room. Rose, could you–”  
  
She shook her head. “If I go back inside, I am not coming back out.”  
  
“Right, then. Martha. You know which door’s mine?”  
  
“I think so,” she lied. She actually had no clue but she trusted the TARDIS to help her…and to provide a necklace.   
  
“On the nightstand. Tell the old girl to be nice.”  
  
Martha went inside to get a necklace and they went on with the other business. It was mostly formalities, Kux stating what the Doctor had done and demanding he be paid half the value of the items and agreeing to allow him to purchase them after that. Then he consented to the Doctor being released from custody. He signed the paper and Rose followed suit. Almost immediately after she returned the pen, she was hit by another bout of coughing. Tyrin came forward and quicklyremoved the cuffs so the Doctor could put his arms around her and keep her up.  
  
She twisted in his grip, lifting from the mask from her face, and a clump of mucus into the dirt. Unfortunately, her reflexes kicked in then and she gasped immediately afterwards. The air was thick, like she’d always imagined fog would be, and tasted salty. It made her eyes water and her nose sting. It caught in her throat and coughing even worse, unable to breathe until the Doctor pushed the mask down onto her face again. She exhaled roughly and then sucked in a nice breath of air from her pack and moaned quietly, clutching at her aching chest, and sagged against the Doctor. She felt like shit and just wanted to go back to bed and rest.  
  
“That’s it,” he snapped. “I’m taking her inside.”  
  
“Yes, yes please do.”   
  
Rose glanced up. The tall dark man called officer Tyrin’s eyes were wide as he stared at her. Like he hadn’t expected her to be so sick or he was shocked at her reaction to breathing in their air.   
  
The TARDIS door opened and Martha stepped out, proudly holding up a silver chain that resembled Rose’s. “I found it!”   
  
Her smile fell away when she noticed how the Doctor was holding onto Rose and her ashen skin.   
  
“Acknowledged!” the court man cried immediately. “Now, please, take the lady inside before she gets any worse.”   
  
The Doctor nodded curtly, adjusted his grip so she was under his arm, and guided her back inside the TARDIS, plucking the necklace from Martha’s hand as he went. The door shut behind him, leaving Martha outside to settle the final business. She accepted the boxes containing the Doctor’s belongings and the parts he needed. With a smile of gratitude, she started to go inside, but Tyrin stopped her.  
  
“Martha?”  
  
She turned. “Yes?”   
  
He bit the inside of his lip and nodded to her. “Good luck.”   
  
“Thank you. So much.” Martha set the boxes on the ground, lifted her mask, and kissed him on the cheek. Slipping the mask back on her face, she watched him touch his cheek, both of which were now tinged with color, and wondered what that gesture represented to his culture.  
  
She gave him one more grateful smile, letting him see her face properly, then lowered the mask, retrieved the boxes, and nudged the TARDIS door open with her shoulder.


	30. Her

Her Wolf was on the seat. Heart rate slightly elevated, breathing imperfect, the entire body was wrong.  
  
She’d felt it for days now. A foreign heaviness in Her circuits, the feeling of something clogging Her vents and filters, and She’d felt tired. So tired. But She’d run a diagnostic and had found no faults in any of Her systems. There was only one logical explanation. Her Wolf could feel Her warnings. Perhaps Her Wolf’s body was trying to warn Her.  
  
So she’d run a diagnostic on Her Wolf’s body and discovered hostile microorganisms taking root. She’d analyzed them and determined their purpose then immediately searched everywhere in Her systems for a way to kill them without harming Her Wolf. There was nothing sufficient onboard. There had not been for some time. She’d tried to warn the Dark Girl but she had not understood. Neither had Her Doctor. He’d mistaken Her warning as pleas for maintenance and landed them on this lump of rock with air incompatible with human bodies. Such frail things they were.  
  
The moment the Dark Girl shut Her doors the TARDIS went into action. Her Doctor sent Her into the vortex and She _flew._  
  
He set coordinates. She ignored them as She often did.  
  
 _No, you fool, that is the wrong century, too far ahead. Their medicines are incompatible with her body._ This _century has the most effective cure that her body can work with._  
  
When Her Sisters were alive, it was considered bad etiquette to not follow the precise directions of your Time Lord or Lady. But then what fun would that be? She stole him so She could see the universe. Sometimes he got to pick the destination, sometimes She did. It was fair. But sometimes she sensed disturbances that needed resolving and She saw him there doing just that, so She took them there, landed them near to the action, and waited.  
  
Right now there was no room for error. The sooner Her Wolf was fixed, the sooner She would be as well. She was not enjoying the sensation of feeling…sick. That was the word, wasn’t it? Sick: a term describing a less than optimal state of being in the English language. Yes.   
  
“Where are we going?” the Dark Girl will ask. Spoken language: English. All present understand. Translation not required.   
  
“65th century. They have the best medicines that are still entirely compatible with her system.” Her Doctor will reply.  
  
“What do you mean ‘compatible’?”   
  
“The human body evolves over time. As you progress so do the sicknesses and the medicines. The 65th century is about as advanced as your bodies can handle and after that their version of pneumonia is too different.”  
  
She entered the Earth year 6389 and quickly scanned the planet for all medical facilities. She selected a large one in London with traces of arton energy indicating the presence of time travelers recently or creatures familiar with the vortex. Perhaps another of Her Sisters had been here. This would do. She materialized in an alley across the street from the hospital.   
  
The Dark Girl and Her Doctor took Her Wolf into the hospital and She waited for them to return. Instead of spending time properly analyzing the planet and time in which they’d landed as She usually did, She spent the time they were away to rearrange.  
  
Her Doctor’s Room moved back to its place next to His Rose’s. The Dark Girl’s room three doors to the left. The kitchen and infirmary placed one corridor over with the library. All of them located near to the console room. She started a filtering cycle to purge and cleanse the air fowled by illness. She moved Her Doctor’s things he’d left in the console room to his room, cleaned the infirmary, moved the book to Her Wolf’s room, and returned the oxygen packs and masks to the storage cupboards.   
  
She waited.  
  
She monitored the happenings inside the hospital through her bonds to Her Wolf and Her Doctor. A physician was examining Her Wolf and speaking with the Dark Girl and Her Doctor. There seemed to be some disbelief at Her Wolf being out of her time. They would scan her system and believe. They would help her.   
  
She waited.  
  
Time flowed past her. No danger, no urgency. They were safe and Her Wolf would be fine.   
  
Her Doctor, Her Wolf, and the Dark Girl returned and She greeted them with a light hum, the only form of speech She possessed that their ears could process. Her Doctor sent her into the vortex and smiled, patting Her console, and went to take His Rose to lie down.   
  
They would be fine.


	31. Recovery

  
Medicine in the 65th century was remarkable and extremely effective on her system. After just three days of antibiotics, Rose was back on her feet. That was not to say she still wasn’t a little weak, but she was no longer hacking up her lungs or losing her lunch, and her fever had all but gone. Everyone was relieved, including the TARDIS.   
  
The only negative was that the antibiotics were designed for a more advanced body and therefore consumed a lot of her energy. She was lucky enough to be awake for eight hours within a twenty-four hour period and when she was actually awake she rarely had the energy to do more than the basics or relocate herself somewhere that wasn’t her bedroom.   
  
The Doctor had been tripping over his own limbs to take care of her, fetching food, cuddling, reading with her, keeping tabs on her fever, and playing board and card games that Martha joined in on sometimes. The farthest he strayed from her was to install the parts that had caused all the fuss, but then he was right back to Rose. His presence also served another purpose. Sick as she was, it wouldn’t do for Rose to be violently jarred from nightmares. He finally told her what he’d been doing to soothe her mind and they discovered that her falling asleep with the knowledge helped keep the nightmares at bay.  
  
The TARDIS rivaled his coddling. The temperature in Rose’s room was strictly regulated, automatically adjusting whenever she got chills. If Rose wanted something to eat, they always found the exact ingredients needed to make it waiting in the kitchen. Whenever Rose settled into bed at night her blankets and sheets were warm but not warm enough to cause her discomfort. She dredged up long neglected board games for them to play, ensured the door to the library always opened to the films section, and relocated the gardens near Rose’s room if she wanted some fresh air.   
  
“Blimey, if this is the kind of treatment I’d get, I really need to get sick.” Martha joked on the second day while the Doctor was fixing lunch. “Though, I don’t think the Doctor would be as panicky.”  
  
“Probably not. Besides, it’s very difficult for us to get sick.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
Rose sighed and leaned back against her headboard. “When you travel in the TARDIS you pick up this bit of background radiation. It’s harmless, just sort of there, but it does make it really difficult for us to get sick. Whenever I do, it’s never as bad as it could’ve been.”  
  
“But you were really sick,” Martha pointed out. “You’re saying you should’ve been worse?”  
  
She nodded.   
  
“Well, you set yourself up for it. Going to all those places with your body’s natural defenses low?”  
  
“Yeah, I know. I know,” she grumbled.   
  
On day four they left the vortex for the first time. They were all stir crazy. Rose especially. It had been well over a week since she’d left, her brief visit in the hospital notwithstanding, and she wanted to breathe in some fresh air. So they went to Earth, Lake Tahoe, sometime before European colonization began. No questions, no fuss, and no one to bother them–just the three of them, the TARDIS, some sand, and clear blue lake water that had yet to know any form of pollution.   
  
They landed in the early summer on a small stretch of sand on the southern shore and stepped out, breathing in the fresh air of their planet and enjoying the warm sunlight. Rose lingered in the doorway behind them, casting nervous glances at the sky where she could see the tip of the sun peaking across the TARDIS. The Doctor held out his hand and, taking a deep breath, she stepped out onto the warm sand and slipped her hand into his.   
  
She inhaled sharply when she felt the warmth of the sun touch her skin and exhaled shakily. There was no reason to be afraid, she told herself. This wasn’t Torajji. This was her sun. Sol. The same one that had kept her alive for her entire life on Earth and had never harmed her except for the occasional sunburn. With the strong sunscreen she’d put on just before coming outside, that wasn’t likely to happen today.   
  
Rose wore a light green shirt that hung off one shoulder and a pair of cream capris. The first outfit she’d worn in a week that wasn’t chosen with the expectation to fall asleep sometime while wearing it. After so long of visiting cool places and being inside the temperate environment of the TARDIS, she had to admit that summer felt wonderful. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed it. And she was pleased to discover after several minutes of being exposed to it, the heat didn’t make her feel trapped or afraid. She buried her toes in the warm and smiled as the breeze from the lake blew against her skin, tickling her cheeks and blowing her hair out behind her.   
  
A pair of cool arms encircled her waist. She smiled and leaned back ever so slightly. “How are you feeling?” he asked  
  
Rose covered his hands with hers. “Happy.”   
  
She heard the smile in his voice. “Not what I meant.”   
  
“I’m awake,” she said, “and I don’t feel like I’m about to fall over. Same as five minutes ago.”  
  
He pressed a kiss against the top of her head. “Good. Remember our deal, though. Don’t go where we can’t see you and if you start feeling tired at all, you tell me straight away.”  
  
“Yes, _Mum_.” She twisted around in his grip and frowned at him. “Am I allowed to walk in the water or are you worried I might fall asleep and drown?”  
  
“Cheeky.” He tapped her on the nose with his forefinger.   
  
Her necklace gleamed in the sunlight and he automatically glanced down at it. Rose stretched her neck up and kissed his still outstretched finger then turned and scrambled down towards the water. He watched her go. She stopped about ankle-deep and stared out at the vast expanse of Lake Tahoe. He noted the way her shoulders slowly relaxed and her hands turned, fingers spreading wide. He wished he could see her face.  
  
Martha appeared beside him with a folded yellow blanket in her arms. She pinched the corners in her fingers and let the rest drop from her arms. It unfurled and she flapped it out into the air, lowering it slowly onto the sand. She slid her palms together, satisfied, then plopped unceremoniously onto it. She stretched out on her back, folding her arms behind her head, and wiggled around for a few moments to get comfortable.  
  
“Alright, I’m ready.” she announced, eyes closed. “You may begin now.”  
  
The Doctor lifted his eyebrows. What was she on about now? “What?”  
  
She peeked at him. “You’re the tour guide of the universe. Tell me about Lake Tahoo.”  
  
“Tahoe,” he corrected, sitting down on the edge of the blanket, and proceeded to do just that. How it was formed millions of years ago by faults, the people that would live around the lake, what the settlers would make of it, the vacation resorts of her time, what would become of the lake over the 21st century, and how the lake would ultimately meet its end in the 33rd.   
  
He kept his eyes on Rose almost the entire time. She wasn’t doing much, just walking up and down a small area of the shallows, no farther than knee-deep into the lake. She bent at the waist and slid her fingers through the water. Cupped her hands and brought water up to her face. Shook off the residual drops. Tilted her head towards the sun and smiled. The ease with which she bared her face to the sun both surprised him and made him smile proudly. She was strong, his Rose.  
  
“Doctor,” said Martha. “Doctor?”  
  
He didn’t look away from Rose. “Hmm?”  
  
“Didn’t you say the Washoe tribe lived on the southern shores in the summer?”  
  
“Mmhmm.”  
  
“It’s summer. We’re on the southern half of the lake.”  
  
“Mmhmm.”  
  
“What is that it? Just gonna sit there and stare at Rose?”  
  
“Mmhmm.”  
  
“Would you _please_ take this seriously? What if they find us? They’ve probably never seen white or black people before.” A thought occurred to her. “What if they try to scalp us?!”  
  
 _Oh, of all the ridiculous…_ He did look away from Rose then and frowned at Martha, unimpressed. “Seriously? You’re worried about scalping?”  
  
“YES! Not all of us can switch bodies when we die and I like my head intact, ta.”  
  
He rolled his eyes in exasperation. Then again, this was the woman who worried about getting carted off when they landed and mingled anytime before the 13th Amendment. “That won’t be popular for centuries,” he explained as patiently as he could. “And even then it only happens during the wars with the colonials. You’re right, the people here probably have never seen other races before, but they also haven’t learned to associate other races as invaders who want their land. They probably would consider us spirits, if anything. Especially her.”  
  
He nodded towards Rose who was standing in the shallows looking radiant in the sun.  
  
“In any case, they probably don’t even know we’re here, and if they do they we are clearly are weaponless and nonthreatening. I think we’ll be fine.”  
  
“If you say so.”   
  
Martha sat up and leaned back on her hands. She was tempted to get up and join Rose out there but she got the feeling her friend was enjoying the time on her own. She’d scarcely had a private moment over the past few days. Plus Martha didn’t often get the chance to sit with just the Doctor. She was undeniably closer to Rose and sometimes she wasn’t sure if she’d gained a best friend or a sister. Did it matter? They were like her family now. It made being away from her real family easier and it made her happy to see them happy.   
  
Every time they snuggled up together on the couch or exchanged any sort of kiss, Martha would smile smugly to herself, knowing she’d helped them get a move on. Speaking of which…she probably wouldn’t get another chance at this.  
  
“So, have you two shagged yet?”  
  
The Doctor sputtered and his eyes went wide with shock and something a little like terror. “Th-that’s…I d-don’t think that’s any of your business.”  
  
“That’ll be a no, then.”  
  
“Martha!”  
  
Martha arched her eyebrows and gave him a look. “What’s the hold up? Don’t tell me you’re scared.”  
  
He looked away resolutely. “I am not having this conversation with you.”   
  
“Hmm…I’m gonna go with ‘not scared’ on this one. So, are you not compatible?”  
  
“We are not discussing this.”  
  
She ignored him. “Do you not have the right bits or something?”  
  
The Doctor’s exhale sounded almost like a growl. “Martha, do you recall what I told you in the library a few months ago? The day I took you both to Kataa Flo Ko?”  
  
She had to think about it for a moment but then she nodded. “About Gallifreyan romancing and stuff, right?”  
  
“If that’s what you want to call it,” he allowed. “Do you remember what I said about displaying affection?”  
  
“Holding hands equals hugging, hugging is like kissing, kissing is serious.”   
  
He nodded slowly. “And sex was something else entirely. My people, for the most part, were sterile so many marriages were arranged based on DNA compatibilities and the likelihood the couple could produce a natural child. Every couple, whether Time Lord or not, was expected to attempt to have a child naturally, but almost every time they failed and eventually they each gave DNA samples and infants were created through the Looms.”   
  
“Looms?” she asked, picturing the weaving device from Earth.  
  
“That’s what we called them. You’d call it being grown in a lab.”  
  
“Were you?”   
  
The Doctor smiled. “Sometimes couples were lucky and they actually did conceive. But it was a very rare thing, only five times in the last thousand years. ”  
  
“And you were one of them,” she guessed.  
  
He nodded. “Yes, I am.”   
  
Martha couldn’t help but chuckle at the twinge of pride in his voice. It must have been something of a status. She could imagine him bragging about it as he was growing up. “So why are you telling me this?” she asked.  
  
“I told Rose about the Looms months ago, after our visit to a planet called Cekir where babies are literally delivered by the stork. Well, not a stork, they’re actually called Yolatva and they’re bright green instead of white and–”  
  
“Doctor.”  
  
He glanced down at her momentarily. “Sex was only done in an attempt reproduce and most couples ceased when it became clear they could not conceive.”  
  
Martha sighed. “Are you telling me you’re not–?”  
  
“Let me finish.”   
  
“Okay.”  
  
“They stopped because most couples in the later days were in arranged marriages. Some did love each other, but they weren’t _in love_. Combined with repressed urges, they usually felt no need for intimacy. But for couples in love, from what I heard, it was different. Telepathy played a part in it and they could form a permanent bond, but I never…” he trailed off.  
  
Martha didn’t realize she was holding her breath until her chest started to hurt. She exhaled, drawing in a deep breath of air as she _finally_ got it. She’d already known he was afraid of his feelings for Rose since her life was so short compared to his, but this revelation brought things into a whole new light. She would not pretend to understand the telepathy aspect he mentioned, but the word ‘permanent’ was clear enough. If he allowed himself to love Rose fully, what would happen to him when she was gone?  
  
As if reading her mind, the Doctor murmured, “You told me to live in the moment, before. Carpe diem. Now answer me this: is it worth it to enjoy something you can only have for a moment if the aftermath will be unbearable?”   
  
She had no answer.  
  
Martha gazed out across the serene landscape again. The mountains were gorgeous and the trees were lush and green. Sunlight reflected off the clear blue water as it danced, rippling and swelling as the wind blew across. She thought she saw smoke in the distance, probably from a small fire from in campsite of the tribe. He was right, they were a long way off; little chance they’d be found out. Her eyes flicked to Rose again. She really did seem to be enjoying herself.   
  
Rose shifted her feet in the sand to find better purchase. The small waves buffet her legs but she held firm. She wanted to see if it would work.   
  
A tiny silver fish swam closer to examine her. Another followed. Then another. And another. She grinned. They swam around her curiously, slowly drifting closer. She felt the light brush of their fins and mouths against her skin as they decided she was not a threat. It was difficult to hold perfectly still, to not wiggle her toes, or twitch whenever they made contact.  
  
If the Doctor was standing with her, this was when he’d start telling her about the limited memories of fish. How they could not hold thoughts for more than a few seconds in some cases. She’d been standing there for several minutes, a small eternity to a fish, and they’d accepted her as a natural part of their environment. She wondered what it would be like to not remember and immediately decided that she did not want to know.   
  
Eventually, though, her limbs began to tire from holding so still and she figured her friends ashore would be wondering if she’d fallen asleep standing up. With one final look at the fish scuttling around, she lifted one foot from the water. They knew from the moment she shifted that there was change, felt the water being displaced around them in an unnatural way, and had cleared off before she even took a step backwards. Rose felt a little bad for spooking them but they would forget she’d ever been there soon enough.  
  
She waded back towards shore, locating the Doctor and Martha, and lifted her hand in a wave. The Doctor was watching her and waved back. Martha noticed his gesture and followed suit a moment later. Before Rose had fully left the water, a strong gust of wind knocked into her. She turned to face it, spreading her arms wide, and inhaled as the power of the wind swept against her body and whipped her hair and clothes. It was thrilling, stimulating the rush she got every time she ran with the Doctor, whether from an enemy or just because they could. She lifted her head to the sky and whooped loudly.   
  
When the wind died down she exhaled heavily and spun around, padding through the sand to the Doctor and Martha. She was stretched out on a pastel yellow blanket and he was sitting cross-legged on his coat.  
  
“Having fun?” the Doctor asked. Then he blinked in surprise when Rose sat down in his lap. She shifted around so she was more comfortable then settled back against his chest, her head pillowed on his shoulder, and her legs stretched out in front of his.   
  
“Yep. What about you? You’ve just been sittin’ here. Figured you’d be climbin’ a tree or something by now.”   
  
“Rose Tyler, of the three people sitting on this beach, I am the least likely to be climbing any trees. Not descended from apes, me.”  
  
His voice rumbled in her ear and she smiled, her eyes sliding shut. “Of course.”  
  
“I was telling Martha about Lake Tahoe earlier. Would you like to hear?”  
  
She nodded and he launched into his lecture. She was able to follow along relatively easily. There weren’t any scientific terms she hadn’t heard before and she liked hearing about cultures. But after a few minutes she stopped paying attention to the words and just focused on the way his voice rumbled in his chest. The way his cheek was pressed against her head and his lips would occasionally brush her temple. The way his arms felt around her. It was bliss.   
  
Before long she felt the all too familiar tug of exhaustion pulling at her. She’d had more physical activity in the last hour than she’d had in days and she was used to falling asleep with his voice in her ear. And the sunlight felt quite nice…  
  
Martha noted the sudden silence and looked around in surprise. The Doctor had stopped talking and Rose appeared to have fallen asleep. She knew they were sleeping together–or, well, sharing a bed while they slept–so this couldn’t be the first time he’d seen her asleep, but he was studying her with intense curiosity. Brushing the hair from her face and lowering her onto the blanket that Martha had vacated.   
  
Half an hour passed and Martha had walked around the small beach four times and found two interesting rocks to keep as souvenirs. It was around then she decided that she was bored and returned to the blanket where the Doctor sat next to the sleeping form of Rose in silent vigil.   
  
“Ready to go?” he asked when she got near.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
He gently lifted Rose from the blanket and cradled her in his arms. Martha folded the blanket messily, picked up his jacket, and led the way up to the TARDIS. Balancing them both in one arm, she maneuvered her other hand under her shirt and pulled out her key.  
  
“I answered my own question,” he told her quietly.  
  
Martha unlocked the door swiftly and nudged it open with her shoulder. “But was it the right answer?”  
  
“I think so.”   
  
Days passed and Rose got better. The last of the antibiotics worked through her system and she was left tired, but healthy. She was given teas to boost her strength and replenish the energy the medicine had used up. They took her somewhere on Earth every day. They’d spend hours outside so she could get more comfortable being out in the sun and absorb some much-needed vitamin D. They always brought an umbrella so if she ever grew panicked she would have something to retreat under.   
  
One time they brought a television outside to watch movies. After watching the Lion King (for the 27th time since coming onboard the TARDIS), Martha put in an action movie she didn't recognize. She hadn't counted on the two of them getting that into it.   
  
"No, you idiot!" Rose shouted at the screen as the young protagonist fled from the explosions. "Trouble is the other way!"  
  
"You never run from a trouble!" the Doctor added loudly.   
  
Martha winced and decided right then and there that she was never watching action flicks with them again.  
  
Another time they brought cards, and the time after they brought board games. Whenever she fell asleep–and it was always _when_ rather than _if_ –the Doctor would make sure she was comfortable on a blanket or his coat then continue on with the game with Martha or resume the film.   
  
Then one day she didn’t fall asleep at any point during their excursion.   
  
So the next day they actually went out. He took them to a large village in Germany, sometime during the 1600s and they spent hours walking around. Rose stayed alert the entire time and enjoyed every minute of it. She fell asleep earlier than normal that night, though. They went on similar excursions for the next week with Rose regaining more of her strength every day, so that by the end of the week in 1868, when they had to get the hell out of Dodge, Rose was able to run on her own two feet back to the TARDIS. They laughed for a long time afterwards.   
  
She was able to eat hot meals again and she no longer recoiled at the sight of a candle. The weight she’d lost came back. Her skin lost its sickly pallor, darkening to a healthy tan helped along from hours basking in the sun. Martha helped her bleach her roots. She applied makeup, slipped on her favorite pair of jeans, a pink t-shirt, black loose vest, and trainers. And for the first time in weeks Rose Tyler felt like herself.   
  
She bounded into the control room with a smile on her face that the Doctor mirrored.   
  
“Okay. Let’s go save the world,” she said.  
  
His smile dropped into a concerned frown and he reached for the monitor. “What?”  
  
“You heard me. Let’s go!”  
  
“Wha–but…” he looked at the display screen. “There’s nothing wrong? No distress signals or anomalies screaming for attention. Do you know something I don’t?”  
  
“No, I just want to save the world.”  
  
The corner of the Doctor’s mouth twitched upwards. “Wake up this morning with a craving?”  
  
“Yes, actually. I’ve been rather useless for ages now and I’d like to do something.”  
  
“You’re not useless.”   
  
She frowned at him. “Doctor, I could barely walk to the loo on my own half the time. That’s about as useless as I can get. I want to help someone. And I’m not talkin’ about helpin’ an old lady across the street.”  
  
“Yeah, but…save the world? Are you sure your up for anything on a world-saving scale?” he fretted and she rolled her eyes. Coddling had been nice when it was necessary but it was getting frustrating. Her ire did not escape his notice. “How about something smaller instead? We can save a town. There’s always a town that needs saving on Earth.”  
  
Rose rolled her eyes again. “Alright, fine. Let’s go save a town.”  
  
But of course they ended up saving the world anyway.


	32. Four Things and a Lizard

  
“Rose! Rose!”   
  
Rose whirled around mid-step at the sound of her name, searching for someone she recognized and trying to identify the voice. No one was even paying any attention her except for a short woman with long blonde hair that looked about her age. She was standing just outside the shop they’d got out in front of, wearing a midnight blue dress with see-through sleeves over a burgundy tank and black leggings, with a purple folder clutched in her hand.   
  
The girl stared at Rose almost expectantly with the hugest smile on her face.   
  
“Um…yes?” Rose asked.   
  
Her eyes flicked over her Rose’s shoulder to the Doctor and Martha and her grin got even wider. “It’s you! Oh my God, it’s you! You’re alive!”  
  
Rose glanced at the Doctor for help. “Sorry, do I know you?”  
  
The woman’s face fell. “You don’t remember me.”  
  
Martha tugged on Rose’s arm. “We don’t have time for this. Migration’s started.”  
  
Rose spared her a glance then explained to the woman, “I’ve never met you.”   
  
“No, but… It’s me, Sally Sparrow.”   
  
“Sorry,” the Doctor apologized. He approached the woman with a reassuring smile. “Hello, I’m the Doctor.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
His grin widened and Rose saw the twinkle in his eye that came with meeting new people and a mystery. “Well, then. Our lives are sort of complicated. Things don’t always happen in the right order. Gets confusing.”  
  
“Of course!” Sally realized. “You’re time travellers. It hasn’t happened yet! None of it, it’s still in your future!”  
  
“What hasn’t happened?”  
  
“Uh, guys?” Martha called. “Twenty minutes to Red hatching.”  
  
“It was me,” Sally said to herself. “Oh, for God’s sake, it was me all along. You got it all from me! And that’s how you recognized me without my picture!”   
  
“Got what?” the Doctor asked.  
  
“What are you talking about?” Rose asked.   
  
“Okay. Listen,” she told them. “One day you’re going to get stuck in 1969. Make sure you’ve got this with you.” she handed the folder to the Doctor. “You’re going to need it.”   
  
“Doctor! Rose!” Martha called impatiently.   
  
The Doctor turned, pointing at Martha, and spoke quickly to the woman. “Yeah, listen, got to dash…things happening. Well, four things. Well, four things and a lizard.”   
  
Sally grinned and nodded. “Okay. No worries, on you go. See you around some day. ”  
  
The Doctor smiled at her and then his smile waned as he noticed the brown-haired young man approaching them with a milk bottle clutched in his hand. The man froze, eyes widening, and his jaw dropped. Sally watched him carefully, gauging his reaction, then slipped her hand into his. The man looked down at their hands in surprise and Sally smiled at him.   
  
Turning back to them, she gave one final smile. “Goodbye and good luck.”  
  
Rose lifted her eyebrows curiously. It wasn’t every day she met someone who’d already met her. While she wasn’t eager to get stuck in 1969, she was looking forward to meeting Sally Sparrow properly.   
  
The Doctor folded the folder carefully and pocketed it. He slipped his now free hand into Rose’s and tugged her along. She threw one last glance over her shoulder at the retreating couple then followed the Doctor and Martha down the streets. She didn’t ask them what that had all been about and they didn’t bring it up. They had more important things to worry about. Five things, actually, and they all were tied together in a horrible knot the three time travellers were being forced to unravel.   
  
Seven days ago an Asokrian armada attempted to make contact with Earth with systems beyond anything the planet could detect in this century. So, failing at that, they’d sent an ambassador. The ambassador’s ship had malfunctioned and he’d crashed to Earth, scaring the hell out of a few people out in the French countryside. Then the ambassador had been pursued and captured, but not before sending one final distress message to the armada.   
  
It was only by sheer luck the TARDIS had caught the final warning being sent towards Earth.  
  
The TARDIS had materialized in the command ship and claimed to represent Earth. After another near death, they managed to convince them they’d come in peace. So the Asokrian commander explained the situation. Apparently a princess named Notte from their planet had run away from home and came to this backwater corner of the galaxy to hide. She didn’t know her ship had a tracking device that informed her parents where she’d landed. They’d sent the armada after her. Their attempts to contact Earth explain the situation and request permission to land and retrieve their wayward royal had ended badly. They’d been planning to surround the planet and invade it to retrieve her.  
  
“Well, that won’t to anything except terrify the planet and get your people killed,” the Doctor had told them. “The humans are only just accepting the existence of aliens and their recent encounters have been catastrophic. They’ll shoot first and ask questions later.”  
  
“Then what do you propose, Doctor?” Commander Xaru had asked.   
  
“Tell me, did your ambassador give a description of who was chasing him? Don’t suppose by any chance it was a bunch of blokes in red berets?”   
  
It was. The Doctor agreed to go talk to UNIT and secure the release of the ambassador. Well, after proving to UNIT he was who he said he was (which took longer than he’d liked), the Doctor described the situation. Unfortunately, some new protocols prohibited the release of the ambassador until the entire situation was sorted.   
  
Not wanting to sic the military on the poor princess, the Doctor landed them in a beautiful garden where some friends of his lived. He called them Oerthians.   
  
At first sight, Martha mistook them for large Easter eggs. Then their ears perked up and they moved and she saw they resembled oversized fluffy rabbits with pastel fur with deeply colored eyes. The Doctor told them who he was and they hopped over to greet them. Oerthians were notoriously good trackers and they agreed to scour London for Notte and be back within two hours.   
  
The Doctor suggested they went inside for tea while they waited and Martha asked where they were. So he led her around the hedges and gestured to Buckingham Palace.   
  
She nearly had a heart attack. “I’m not dressed to meet the queen!”   
  
“If it helps, you look much nicer than I did.”  
  
No, it did not help, and she refused to go in. So they waited in the little section of the Buckingham gardens that the Oerthians called home. It was a private area of the garden, for obvious reasons, and the Doctor reckoned they should be able to wait around unnoticed. Plus he was acquainted with the queen–no, not in that way, Martha, and he still had no idea why Lizzie the First hated him–so they were allowed to be there. It was going well until a guard found them and then they’d had to leg it back to the TARDIS.   
  
“I thought you were friends with the queen!” Rose had shrieked.   
  
“The queen, yes! That guy, no!”   
  
A few minutes later while the Doctor was fiddling with something on the monitor, Rose had peeked outside to see if the guard was gone. He wasn’t and he had three others with him. Two seconds later two guns were pointed at her forehead. She squeaked in alarm and slammed the door shut. How the hell were they supposed to communicate with the Oerthians when they were trapped inside?   
  
Five more minutes passed in relative silence and then there was a knock at the door. The Doctor looked up, grinned, and told Martha to get it. The medical student frowned at him but had done as asked. She eased the door open, took one look at who was outside, and promptly slammed the door with a loud gasp.   
  
“YOU GIT!” she’d howled at the Doctor while he roared with laughter.   
  
He pranced down the ramp and opened the door. “Good afternoon, your majesty. Sorry about my companion, she feels she isn’t appropriately dressed to meet you.”  
  
“I’m gonna murder him,” Martha growled to Rose.   
  
The Oerthians returned an hour later, having located princess Notte in Chelsea. They hadn’t approached her, though. Didn’t want to get involved in intergalactic politics. As payment for their help the Doctor promised to mention them as little as possible. Good enough for the Oerthians.   
  
The shop the princess had found work in was easy enough to locate. It was one of those little teen stores with pop culture clothing and accessories, kind of like Hot Topic, except it was noticeably less black. She fit right in among the other employees. Asokrians were similar in many ways to humans. Their biology was slightly different, and from the region Notte hailed from their eyes were shades of purple or green and their hair came in different shades of blue.   
  
She’d approached them with a smile and greeted them in English–at least, Rose assumed it was English, because how else could she be working in a shop? She must have some translator technology.  
  
“Can I help you?”  
  
The Doctor smiled, hands in his pockets, the very picture of relaxed. “Yes, I think you can, princess.”  
  
The princess’s face darkened almost instantaneously and Rose wondered if the Doctor had spoken in her native tongue. “Who are you?”  
  
“My name’s the Doctor. I’m here on behalf of Commander Xaru, the United Intelligence Taskforce, and as of fifteen minutes ago, Queen Elizabeth.”  
  
Notte licked her lips nervously. “Commander Xaru?”  
  
“Yeah,” he drawled. “Seems your parents took issue with your grand caper. They sent the armada.”  
  
“I’m not going back,” she said. “You can’t make me.”  
  
“Actually, I think you’ll find I can.” The Doctor countered in the same tone as before. “I’m not sure how much you know about this planet, but they’ve been invaded three times in the last year or so. All thwarted by me, of course. But the armada has exhausted all their other options besides surrounding and landing on this planet to find you. If they do, Earth will most likely retaliate. I’m not going to have Earth involved in an intergalactic war because a young princess ran away from home. So you will be going back, your highness.”  
  
“As I said, you can’t make me leave. I’ll scream and put up a fuss and the people here won’t let you remove me.”  
  
“I’m sorry, did you not just hear me? I’m currently representing Earth’s primary defense against aliens and the monarch of the ground you’re standing on. I’m not going to risk this planet because of you,” he growled with a trace of the Oncoming Storm on his face. Not enough to terrify her but enough that she understood what she was dealing with. “Now, you can either cooperate with us or you’ll be removed by force. But you will be leaving with us, one way or the other.”  
  
Notte swallowed. “I can’t go home.”  
  
“Why? …Were you threatened?”   
  
“N-no, I wasn’t, but… I can’t go home.” She wrung her hands nervously. “I took something with me when I left. A Red egg.”  
  
The Doctor rolled his eyes and sighed. “And what possessed you to do something so moronic? I’m surprised the Red mother didn’t come after you herself.”  
  
“Jossa can just make another and…I wanted a friend,” Notte admitted. “The Red wanted to come with me, too, or else I would’ve never been able to remove the egg. I didn’t plan on staying on this planet forever and I–I didn’t want to travel alone.”  
  
Something in her reason must’ve struck a chord in the Doctor because he sighed. “I’m sure your parents and Jossa will forgive you. Get the egg, go tell your boss you quit, and let’s go.”  
  
“I…don’t have it anymore.” She sniffled.  
  
The Doctor’s eyes widened. Not good. “Where is it?”  
  
The Asokrian armada was waiting in orbit around Jupiter awaiting the return of their ambassador and princess. The ambassador was in the custody of UNIT awaiting proof that the princess had been found. The princess was sorting her affairs on Earth awaiting the return of her Red egg. The egg been stolen by a wyvern and the wyverns were due to begin their annual migration to Ireland any time now.  
  
And to top it all off, the egg was about to hatch and when it did, the tiny life inside would either fall to its death or be eaten.  
  
So to rescue the egg, they had to find the tallest building in the area of London the wyverns would fly over, figure out which one had the egg, and shoot it with an arrow tipped with bronze. It wouldn’t permanently damage the beast, but it would be enough to bring it down for a few minutes. And, in its hurry to find stable ground to land on, it would likely go for the nearest surface, where the three time travellers would be ready to rescue the egg.   
  
“So, how many are going to be migrating?” Rose asked as they ran.  
  
“Oh…about a hundred,” the Doctor replied after a moment.  
  
“One hundred?!”  
  
“Maybe two hundred…”  
  
“Doctor!”   
  
Martha rolled her eyes with a groan.  
  
A flash of the psychic paper and three uses of the sonic screwdriver later, the three of them were standing atop of the tallest building around. They didn’t have time to waste. Already the lead wyverns were flying overhead, mostly transparent in the bright sunlight. The Doctor pulled the pairs binocular goggles he’d modified from his pocket and handed them out, keeping an unmodified pair for himself. He’d claimed he didn’t need the adjustments to see the wyverns.  
  
“Remember, the wyvern we’re looking for has a blue belly and should be carrying the egg in one of its hands.” The three of them stood in a semi-circle facing outward so they had the best chance of seeing as many wyverns as possible. “Also, try to enjoy this if you can. You’re never going to see something like this again unless you’re very lucky. Or unless you have a device that lets you see through the ultraviolet sheen their scales give off at exposure to sunlight in thin air. But egg first, enjoying second. I don’t fancy chasing the flight to Ireland. Right, here we go!”  
  
The main group of wyverns was passing overhead, unbeknownst to the millions of people below. Rose inhaled slowly as her eyes flitted from body to body. They came in every color of the rainbow, mostly in deep or muted shades. Beautiful. Terrifying. She wanted to have another look sometime when they weren’t on a mission. Focusing on their limbs, she was dismayed to realize a lot of them had various items clutched in their claws. Mostly food items–one of them had a still struggling cow–but she spotted one of them carrying a flat screen TV and decided she didn’t want to know why.  
  
“How big’s this egg?” Martha asked.  
  
“About the size of two stacked footballs.”  
  
“Oh, that makes things eas–there! Look!”  
  
The Doctor spun around and followed the path of her finger. “That one has a purple belly,” he said after a moment. “And that’s not an egg. It’s a duffle bag.”  
  
“Whoops.”  
  
A few seconds later she felt the Doctor tense beside her and a second after that he was pulling the bow over his head. “Arrow!” he barked.   
  
Martha turned so her back was to him and he pulled an arrow from the quiver. He took his stance and knocked the arrow, drawing the bowstring back. Rose lifted her eyebrows though she wasn’t really surprised. She’d figured he knew archery when he opted to use a bow and arrow to shoot down the flying lizard instead of a gun with bronze-tipped bullets or something. He followed the path of one of the wyverns as it drew closer and then fired.  
  
He had another arrow nocked and ready before the first was halfway to the flight.  
  
Rose followed its progress through her goggles. By the time she realized it would miss–just barely grazing the beast’s left flank–the Doctor had predicted the trajectory and the way the wyvern would swerve in alarm and had another arrow sailing for that spot.   
  
The arrow pierced the scales on the wyvern’s chest and it shrieked in alarm. She could hear it’s scream all the way down on the building and she wondered what it sounded like to the oblivious people below. The bronze began to take affect and the wyvern started to drop from the sky, pumping its wings furiously to keep up. Rose heard another arrow fly up and saw it stick in the wyvern’s neck. Their other wyverns realized they were under attack and scattered up and away, abandoning the one to its fate.  
  
“Get back!” the Doctor barked, grabbing his companion’s arms and hauling them out of the way. The wyvern descended quickly and, as the Doctor had predicted, aimed for the building where they were.  
  
The wyvern had enough control left to make a somewhat graceful landing but they felt the building shake under its weight. It really was quite beautiful up close. Through the ultraviolet filters in their goggles they could see the wyvern had beautiful midnight blue scales and lighter belly. It crouched there, panting loudly, golden eyes fixed on them.  
  
“Right,” the Doctor said slowly. “We don’t have long. Rose, you know the setting to lock doors?” He handed her the sonic. “Do it. We don’t want anyone bursting out here. We’re low enough that it can be seen up close without goggles. Martha, do you know how to work a bow?”  
  
“Nope.”  
  
“Well at least make it look like you can. They’re smart creatures.” He handed her the bow then started towards the dragon.   
  
Rose ran over to the stairway door to lock it. Martha pulled an arrow from the quiver and tried to mimic what she’d seen the Doctor do. Once she was sure she could at least appear threatening and crept after him. The Doctor appeared to be…speaking to it.  
  
“–and you’ve got something that I need in your hand right there. You stole it yesterday,” he said calmly. The wyvern stared at him. “Come on, girl, hand it over.”  
  
The wyvern growled quietly.  
  
“You don’t really want it, believe me. That’s an alien egg. Comes from a world out in the stars and it’s about to hatch. You’d probably make yourself sick. Oh, I’ll tell you what: you give me the little Red there and I’ll get those arrows out. I’ll even give you a salve to help get you back in the air.”  
  
“Doctor, can it understand you?” Martha asked.  
  
“She can, yes. And I can understand her.”  
  
“Why can’t I?”  
  
“It’s mostly a telepathic communication, but it’s also a bit of a spoken language, the kind the TARDIS doesn’t translate. She knows exactly what I want and what I’m offering.”  
  
“So why did we shoot her?”  
  
“To get her attention. What? Did you think we were going to actually try and kill a wyvern? In the middle of London, no less!” He shook his head. “Now, if the lady would be so kind as to give me the egg, we can get you sorted, and we’ll all be on our way.”   
  
Growling, the wyvern slowly extended her long midnight blue arm towards them and held out the large crimson Red egg. He took a few steps closer and carefully took the egg from her. “Thank you. Oh, and just in the nick of time, too. Rose? Give us a hand?”  
  
Rose walked up to them, slipped the sonic into his coat pocket, and held her arms out for the egg. She cradled it close to the chest and squeaked in surprise. “I can fell it moving.”  
  
“It's about to hatch,” the Doctor explained. “Any minute now. Alright now, I’ gonna get these arrows out…”  
  
The two women watched him carefully remove the arrow from the wyvern’s chest. A bit of blood trickled from the small hole in her shining scales but the Doctor immediately poured a clear liquid over the wound. The wyvern let out a low grumble that sounded pleased then lowered her neck so he could remove the other. He spoke a quiet encouragement then pulled.   
  
Rose, meanwhile, was trying her best to keep hold of the Red egg. The tiny life inside was ready to greet the world, turning and wriggling and pushing against the shell.   
  
The Doctor patted the wyvern’s neck gently. “Alright, thank you very much. Good luck on your trip. Stay warm.”  
  
The wyvern snorted and waited for the Doctor to move a few paces away before she stretched her arms wide and flapped her wings, pushing off from the roof. They watched her soar high into the air, do a graceful flip, then flew off in the direction of her clan.  
  
Martha lowered the bow.  
  
The Doctor smacked his hands together and spun around, grinning. “Well, that went a lot better than I’d hoped. Rose, how’s junior?”  
  
“Wiggling,” she answered, shifting her grip.  
  
“Can you keep ahold of her?”  
  
She bit her lip, adjusting again. “I think so, yeah. But we don’t have long.”  
  
“No, we don’t,” he agreed, pulling the sonic from his pocket. “First living thing that Red sees it’ll consider mum.”  
  
“Oh, blimey.”   
  
By the time they made it back to the hostel where Notte had been living the egg was already starting to crack. The Asokrian princess was waiting by the TARDIS in the small alleyway between the buildings. Her eyes lit up when she saw the hatching Red and held out her arms eagerly. Rose handed it over then unlocked the TARDIS door. The Doctor shouldered Notte’s yellow duffle bag and ushered them inside quickly.   
  
Notte froze on the ramp and let the others pass her by. She gawked. “How in Hensl’s name does this all this fit inside the box?”  
  
“Long story,” Rose told her. “But it’s perfectly safe, come on.”  
  
The Doctor set her bag down near the console and started punching in the coordinates. “Martha, Rose, take Notte down to the water garden. There will be no eggs hatching in my console room.”   
  
“Water garden?” Notte gasped. “You mean there’s more in here?”  
  
Another loud crack came from the egg, effectively capturing most of Notte’s attention. She hardly seemed to notice when they led her down four separate hallways. She was too busy running the tip of her forefinger along the cracks in the shell, tapping on several places, cooing to the tiny life struggling to emerge. A light over one of the doorways flickered and Rose pushed it open, eager to see this new room.   
  
It wasn’t very big, she could tell that straight away, but the TARDIS did a good job of making it appear larger. The sky above them was a beautiful light blue and a single sun shone brightly. In the middle was a large pond with a tiered waterfall on the far side, surrounded by large stones, leafy green plants, with pebbles scattered all around. Several lily pads floated on the water and beautiful blossoms sprouted up here and there among the plants.   
  
Notte glanced up curiously then gasped.  
  
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Martha grinned.  
  
“It looks like…home,” she stated. “I see why your Doctor thought I should wait in here.”  
  
“Oh, he’s not _my_ Doctor.”   
  
Notte set the egg down among a small patch of plants and blossoms then knelt beside it.   
  
“So how does this work?” Martha asked. “Does it just hatch or do we have to do anything to help?”  
  
“No, I think it’ll just hatch.”  
  
“You _think_?”  
  
“Well, I…I’ve never actually seen one born,” she admitted.   
  
Both women stared at her. “And you just took it?” Rose demanded. “Not knowing a thing on how to birth or take care of it?”   
  
“I know how to take care of them. They love to bathe in cold water but be groomed with a warm brush. They love to eat norka berries, gotos, pall bones–”  
  
“And that’s when they’re babies?”  
  
Notte frowned. “What do you mean?”  
  
“On Earth, baby animals are fed by their parents. Most times they don’t eat the same things as their parents when they’re babies.”  
  
Another crack appeared and Notte looked concerned. “Is it going to die?”  
  
“No, we won’t let it. The TARDIS probably has something onboard the baby can eat. We’ll ask her in a few minutes. Oh, look.” She pointed to the egg. One of the pieces on the side was slowly being nudged outward.  
  
The three of them sat around the egg and watched the baby Red slowly pushed its way out of the egg. Princess Notte barely spoke to them and neither Rose nor Martha really had anything to talk about. At one point they felt the TARDIS shudder as it landed but the Doctor did not appear to fetch them so they remained where they were. As more and more of the shell was pushed away by a tiny black beak, they began to notice bits of fluffy brown down peeking through. Notte reached forward to help remove the detached pieces that remained clinging to the baby.   
  
Then the beak opened and released a tiny _peep_.  
  
When the Doctor entered the garden with the Asokrian ambassador in tow, Rose expected to be witness to a royal row. Indeed the man and was gearing up to give the princess one hell of a scolding, but then he saw the hatching Red and enraptured expression on Notte’s face, the words died in his throat.   
  
Baby born, princess and ambassador acquired, and Earth saved. All in all, Rose decided, not a bad day.


	33. Run Away

  
Rose rummaged through her closet to find something to go with the hot pink shirt she’d found in the 1980’s section of the wardrobe. She was thinking of asking the Doctor to take them there later once he and Martha got back.  
  
The pair of them had gone to hear a speaker at a convention who supposedly was on his way to developing the cure for cancer. The Doctor had decided this was a good opportunity for him to give the scientist a nudge in the right direction. An effective cure wouldn’t be found for another century but there was nothing that said he couldn’t help them along or hinder him if he had to. The announcement of the cure for cancer was a fixed event.  
  
But the mere mention of a scientific convention had caused Rose’s nose to wrinkle in distaste and she’d told them to go have fun together. If the Doctor were going with any other woman in the universe she would’ve tagged along to be sure they understood he was off-limits. They were at the point where she felt she had the right to give off those kinds of signals. Martha had been pushing them together ever since she came onboard. She wouldn’t have done that if she’d been secretly waiting to put the moves on him herself.   
  
The three of them fit together. It reminded Rose of their days with Jack. They’d made a great team, the three of them. They’d functioned together as a group and also when it was just two of them and the other was somewhere else. She wasn’t quite sure what Jack and the Doctor talked about when she wasn’t around, just that they’d gotten along once the Doctor had gotten over his unfortunate (or not so unfortunate, depending how you looked at it) case of Captain Envy.   
  
Whenever the Doctor was busy, or they’d stopped on a planet toxic to humans, or was in one of his broods, she and Jack had often sought each other out for entertainment. Those were the times when he’d tell her the stories he knew the Doctor wouldn’t approve of, give her honest fashion advice, or teach her things the Doctor had never considered. Like how to defend herself with only her body as a weapon, how to get free of someone’s grip, and stuff like that. Another time he taught her how to create an aphrodisiac for beings with binary vascular systems, like the Doctor. He’d followed that lesson up with ‘what to expect during sex with telepaths.’  
  
Jack had become like a brother. A brother that…gave her alien sex advice and would bed her in a heartbeat. Okay maybe not a brother. But she had loved him like a brother. And he had loved her like–  
  
Actually, there hadn’t been a singular label she could assign to it. Sometimes it seemed fatherly, sometimes it seemed brotherly, and sometimes it was obvious he wanted in her pants (this was when the Doctor would get tetchy and send one of them off somewhere) and if it were anyone else she would have been disturbed.  
  
Rose made a small sound of triumph when she found her favorite denim skirt and pulled it off the hanger.  
  
With Martha, it was like she suddenly had a sister. They came from entirely different backgrounds and in ways they were total opposites, but they got along, they had fun together, and they made a formidable team whenever they wanted to go somewhere the Doctor didn’t. And it was nice to have someone her age and, well, species around that she could talk to. She loved the Doctor and he was her best mate but there were some things she’d never talk to him about.   
  
There didn’t seem to be anything special like that between Martha and the Doctor. They were simply friends. They loved debating and watching old sitcoms. She could kick his butt in rummy and refused to attempt chess with him. She was able to follow along with some of the science and math that usually left Rose’s head spinning. The expressions he made that would normally make Rose give into whatever he was asking would hardly faze Martha most of the time and he’d started working on expressions that would work on her.  
  
Not for the first time she realized that this was her family now. She was okay with that.  
  
Rose was shimmying into a pair of shin-length black leggings when ship shuddered violently. The TARDIS shrieked in pain in her mind and her side stung like something had burned it. She gasped, squeezing her eyes shut until the sting faded, and then she was running. Her bare feet pounded against the floor and she winced when the carpet gave way to cold metal grating.  
  
She heard the Doctor shouting from several hallways away but she couldn’t make out what he was saying until she was closer.  
  
“BUT DID THEY SEE YOU!?”  
  
Martha’s reply was too quick and quiet for her to understand.   
  
She burst into the console room, colliding with the back of the jump seat in her momentum, and nearly falling flat on her arse. “You went to a convention!” she shrieked at them. “How did you get in this much trouble going to a _bloody convention_?!”   
  
The Doctor ran around the console, ignoring her question, and flipped the lever to send them directly into the vortex. The console emitted a warning beep and he glanced down at the screen. He growled in frustration as he grabbed it. “They’re following us!”  
  
“Who’s following us?”  
  
“How can they do that?” Martha demanded. “We’re in a time machine.”  
  
The Doctor scanned the screen then started flipping switches and typing in coordinates. “Stolen technology, they’ve got a Time Agent’s vortex manipulator. They can follow us wherever we go, right across the universe. They’re never going to stop.” He ran his hand through his hair and looked between is two companions and swallowed.   
  
“Doctor, tell me what’s going on.” she ordered. “What’s after us?”  
  
“These creatures, they’re…” he glanced at the screen again, “they’re telepathic parasites. When they’re in a familial unit of four like the group after us, they’re called a ‘Family of Blood.’ They require a host body to live for an extended period of time; otherwise they’ll die. Usually in about twelve weeks.”  
  
“So why are they chasing us?”  
  
“They want me. If they absorb a Time Lord they could live forever, wreak havoc across the universe. It happened once a long time ago, before the War. A Family managed to kill a Time Lady and it took an alliance between the Time Lords and Arcadians to defeat them. And since I’m the last Time Lord, if they take me, well...” he made a face. “All powerful beings with access to time travel? I’m sure you can guess.”  
  
“So what do we do?” Martha asked.  
  
“Well, now, ah… At this point, we have three options. All involving running away.”  
  
“We can’t just kill them?”   
  
From the look on the Doctor’s face you’d have thought she’d just suggested they help Hitler with the Holocaust.   
  
She rolled her eyes. “Fine, then. What did you have in mind?”  
  
He sniffed once, relaxing. “Well, we can either stay in the vortex for three months or however long it takes. We can try to shake them off. Or–and, really, this would be the safest way, because they don’t know what I look like but they know what I smell like and they’re great hunters. They can follow my scent anywhere in the universe. But! But if I don’t smell like a Time Lord then they can’t track me.”  
  
“How do you stop smelling like a Time Lord?” Rose asked.  
  
“The most certain way–” he glanced at her nervously “–is to stop being a Time Lord.”  
  
Rose blinked in surprise.   
  
“And become human,” he finished.  
  
Rose opened her mouth. Shut it. Opened it again. Shut it again. Finally she managed, “I’m sorry… _what_?”  
  
“I can become human.”  
  
“Okay. Stop.” She held up her hand then pointed at him. “You’re a Time Lord. A Time Lord is a special type of Gallifreyan. Right? How can you just _stop_ being a Gallifreyan?”   
  
“By rewriting my biology.”  
  
“Oh, if that’s all.” Martha grumbled.   
  
Rose stared at him. He could become human? And he made it sound so simple. The implications and possibilities raced through her mind. “Have you always been able to do that?”  
  
“Yes. The TARDIS has a feature called the Chameleon Arch that can completely rewrite my DNA changing me from one species to another.”  
  
“So…so what was all that about things you could never give or do with me?” she demanded. “The ‘watching me wither and die’ thing when you could’ve changed so your lifespan matched mine? And what about your people? Why didn’t any of them do it to survive the war?”  
  
“Because it’s not that simple.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t think for a moment that I haven’t considered becoming human for you. Let the universe learn to keep going without me because I don’t ever want to have to learn to keep going without you.  
  
“But, Rose, humans are not like Time Lords. A human mind could maybe handle a Gallifreyan mind–a young or underdeveloped one–but not a Time Lord’s mind. They’d burn. If I changed to human and kept my mind, I’d die. In order for me to become human, I’d have to change completely, mind and body. I wouldn’t remember you, my people, the TARDIS, any of it.”  
  
Rose swallowed, nodding. “I see. But you would never do that for me, even if you could.”  
  
“If you asked, I would.”  
  
She stared at him in surprise. She decided to set aside for later and return to the more pressing issue. “S-so, if you became human to hide from these things, you wouldn’t be the Doctor anymore. B-but you change…change back, right?”  
  
“Yes,” he assured her. “This I could change back from.”  
  
“And you’d look the same?”  
  
“I should. Humans look Time Lord enough so there won’t be any big differences, well, aside from the biological stuff, but that’s all on the inside.”   
  
“So instead of seeing you in a new body, I’d have to see another man in your body.”  
  
“I…” He didn’t finish but he didn’t have to. The expression on his face was enough.  
  
“So how is this any better than when Cassandra possessed you? Or that sun?” Rose shook her head furiously. “No. No! We’ll run, we’ll hide, but you’re stayin’ you! I’ve gone along with a lot of mad or just plain ridiculous plans you’ve come up with, but this is where I draw the line. I’m not going to watch someone else parading about in your body. I _can’t_.”  
  
He nodded. “Alright. So we’ll run.”  
  
The Doctor released her shoulders and turned back to the console and begin flipping and pressing controls rapidly.  
  
“But if they can smell you, how will you be able to hide?” Martha asked.  
  
“I won’t leave the TARDIS. They shouldn’t be able to track me in here and if I put the TARDIS on emergency power then they won’t be able to detect her either. But first I think we should try to shake them off our trail. It will be difficult but if I can scramble the TARDIS’s artron signature, temporarily mask the huon, and give us extra shielding…” he ran his hands through his hair furiously, teeth bared.   
  
“Right!” He ducked down and hefted the Extrapolator off the floor, setting it on the console and flipped a switch. It started to hum. “Rose, man the helmic regulator–the one that looks like a bicycle pump. Martha, hold onto the–the–” he gestured furiously “–red and yellow swirly doohickey over there and when I say so, push down.”  
  
They scrambled around the console to their assigned places and Doctor brushed passed them, flipping a variety of switches, pulling a few levers, turned the big green ball, and hefted the fire extinguisher off the floor and set it down where he’d be doing the most work.   
  
“Rose, keep that pumping up and down starting now. Martha, in three…two…NOW!”  
  
Martha grunted and pushed the red and yellow knob down along its squiggly track. The TARDIS shuddered wildly and she nearly bashed her nose against the controls. She felt the familiar thump as the TARDIS touched down. The Doctor ordered her to keep the knob down as he flipped the lever for them to dematerialize then told her to push it back up. She did, wondering what the hell this little knob did but knowing better than to ask.  
  
They repeated this process at least ten times. Rose had to switch arms twice and several times her face twisted in discomfort. The Doctor mostly stayed over by his little area of the console, entering new coordinates, flipping the main lever, whacking the extrapolator with the mallet, and growling obscenities in a dozen different languages at the screen.   
  
“Yes!” he hissed. “Martha, one more time. Now!”   
  
She pulled the knob down one final time and they landed, lingering, then he flipped the lever and she pushed the knob back up.  
  
“Good! Well done!” he crowed and stepped away from the console.   
  
Martha huffed in relief and flexed her fingers.   
  
Rose massaged bicep gingerly. “What did we just do?” she asked.  
  
“We just bounced to twelve different planets, in nine different parts of the universe, in twelve different time zones. Including Raxicoricofallapatorious.”  
  
“Did it work?”  
  
“We lost them on Clom. Right bit of luck, that.” He sniffed proudly. “Two parasite species together should be an interesting mix. And by interesting I mean extremely volatile.”  
  
“So now where are we?” Martha asked.  
  
“We’re in the vortex around two point five trillion years after the point we exited Clom–a bit drastic but necessary. I need to do a quick diagnostic check on the TARDIS and find out what that just cost us. We might have to make a stop for parts so if you want something to eat you better get it now.”   
  
“What about the Family?”  
  
“I’ve set the TARDIS to give us a proximity alert but, really, assuming they make it out of Clom intact, I think the chances of them finding us again are slim. We should be fine.”  
  
“Well that was easy,” Rose said. She folded her arms. “Why did you even consider changing yourself?”  
  
“Wasn’t sure the old girl could pull it off, to be honest.”   
  
The TARDIS’s hum deepened, the lights dimmed, and Rose felt offense prickling the back of her mind.   
  
“Er, sorry?” he tried. The lights returned to normal and the TARDIS made a peculiar sound that reminded Rose oddly of a huff.  
  
Martha looked between the Doctor and Rose for a moment. Rose caught her eye and inclined her head towards the door. Martha nodded and silently removed herself from the room. Rose waited until she was out of sight, trusting the TARDIS to give them a few minutes privacy. She straightened out her shirt and slowly followed his path around the console. He didn’t even glance at her. She stopped after they’d made a full circuit and sat down in the jump seat.   
  
“Doctor. Did you mean it?”  
  
“Mean what?” he asked.  
  
“You know what I’m talking about.” She took a deep breath and exhaled softly. “Would you become human for me?”  
  
The Doctor closed his eyes, swallowed. “I’ve fought armies and would-be admirers, stopped weddings, thwarted madmen, dethroned kings, broken in and out of prisons for you, and sat through tea with Jackie Tyler on many occasions. I burnt up a sun for you. I died for you, Rose. I would tear apart worlds for you if I had to.” He opened his eyes and turned to face her. “But it the idea that I’d become human for you is what surprises you?”  
  
“Yeah. I guess it’s…. You’re more than a human, Doctor, and you’re the last. Why would I ever think you’d give that up for me? I didn’t even know it was possible for you to change at all. I suppose it doesn’t matter since you wouldn’t even be you,” she added as an afterthought.  
  
“Let’s assume for the moment that I could change my body and keep my mind, then. If you wanted to stop travelling and live a human life with me, I’d do it.”  
  
“And when I’m growing old and dying?”  
  
“I’d grow old and die, too.”  
  
Rose had difficulty swallowing past the lump in her throat. She heard him step closer. His hands came up to cradle her face and he brushed a bit of hair away from her face with his thumb. “Why?” she asked.  
  
“You don’t know?”  
  
“But you’re the last. When you die it all dies with you. I can’t possibly be worth all that. Why would you give up decades–centuries even–and let the last of your people go for me?”  
  
The Doctor smiled down at her and his hands slipped to her shoulders. “Ask me again sometime.” He kissed her forehead then gave her a gentle push towards the door. “Go get shoes on. Love the 80s, look, by the way.”  
  
She couldn’t help but smile back at him and decided to wait. The way he’d said it made her believe he had a reason for wanting to wait and wasn’t trying to just get out of the conversation. Although she wouldn’t put the latter past him.   
  
“Will it do?” she asked.  
  
“Yeah, it should.”  
  
She returned to her room to find some shoes to go with her retro look and laughed when she saw an unfamiliar pair of pink knee-length converse waiting in front of her bed.  
  
“Seriously?” she asked the TARDIS and received a cheerful hum in reply.   
  
Rose laughed and got a pair of socks from her dresser. As expected, the shoes fit her perfectly and she wondered not for the first time how the TARDIS managed to have a never ending supply of clothes that fit her. She couldn’t imagine the Doctor flitting around the universe bringing back girls’ clothing. Had a former companion of his brought these shoes onboard and left them behind when she departed? Did the TARDIS randomly snatch items whenever they landed in different times? Did she grow clothes the same way she grew new rooms?   
  
She considered asking the Doctor. Would he tell her? More likely he’d dismiss her question and claim that some things were better enjoyed when they weren’t understood.   
  
Of course thinking of the Doctor brought their conversation to the forefront of her mind. She could understand why he’d never mentioned the Chameleon Arch before. Besides the fact that there was no need to, that wasn’t the kind of thing you just brought up. _“Yeah, by the way, I’ve got a machine that can make me the same species as you but it also erases my memory so I wouldn’t even know who you were.”_ She didn’t know how she would’ve reacted to that.   
  
But there had been a moment there before he’d explained the ramifications where she’d considered what a human life would be like with the Doctor. All the things they could and couldn’t have. A house. Ordinary–but not too ordinary–jobs. A pet. Children. She had no real desire to be a mother, at least not yet, but he’d been a father once. Would he like to be a father again?   
  
Never mind as a human. What would it be like if they had a child together as they were now? A new baby Gallifreyan that he could pass on his legacy to, perhaps train to be a Time Lord. She didn’t know what effect human genetics would have on the baby, but still. The chance for him to have someone else who would understand things she never could.   
  
Of course, before they had a baby they’d actually have to be having sex and _that_ particular ship didn’t seem to be sailing any time soon.  
  
Rose shook her head. These were not things she should be dwelling on.   
  
She finished tying the laces and stood up, smoothing out her skirt. She walked over to her mirror and gave herself a quick onceover. Hot pink off-shoulder shirt, denim skirt, black leggings, and a pair of pink knee-length converse. Good enough. She slipped her TARDIS key around her neck and put in her favorite hoop earrings. She decided that was good enough and left the room.   
  
She encountered the Doctor halfway back to the console room with a credit chip in his hand.  
  
Rose arched her eyebrow. “So you actually plan on paying this time?”  
  
He grinned sheepishly.   
  
Rose shifted closer to him as they walked and the Doctor slid his arm around her waist like it was the most natural thing in the world. And it was now. She smiled and leaned her head against his shoulder. Martha was waiting for them when they arrived and she smiled at the sight of them. She hopped down from the jump seat and leaned against the console.   
  
The Doctor looked her up and down once. “That what you’re wearing?”  
  
She looked down at herself. Nothing unusual for her: leather jacket, jeans, and a black top. “Should I change?” she asked quickly.  
  
“No, you’re fine. Just checking. I’m not sure when we’re landing. Her universal chronometer is a bit fried so there’s no way to tell.” He studied the display for a moment then started setting the controls. “But she’ll hopefully be able to use her other systems to ensure we land in the right era. If not, we might have to make a few jumps.”  
  
The journey was bumpier than normal. Martha and Rose clung to the console while the Doctor tried to pilot them with one of the primary navigational systems offline. When they touched down he told them to stay put and went to check where they’d landed. He looked outside for a moment and Rose saw a flash of green before he shut the door.   
  
“Nope!” he declared and ran back up the ramp.   
  
Two more unsuccessful landings later, the Doctor looked out again and crowed in triumph. Taking that as a sign they were in the right time the two women followed him outside.   
  
The TARDIS had landed on a corner of a city that belonged in a futuristic sci-fi film. The sky was blue and clouds floated lazily overhead. Vehicles whizzed through the air following invisible roads in between tall, iridescent or dark buildings, and in the space below the sky roads, people zipped around on flying bicycles and hover boards. The humming of the vehicles and the buzz of conversation filled the air. The air smelled way too fresh to be a big city and the scent of warm cinnamon tickled Rose’s nose and made her mouth water and she spotted a bakery across the street with its doors open.  
  
The crowds passing them were a mix of humans, aliens, and some that looked like half-breeds. They were dressed in a myriad of different styles, a result of the blend of cultures on Earth now. There didn’t seem to be any distinct pattern on who wore what, just that no one was really mixing colors. Oh, the three of them would stick out like sore thumbs, Rose realized glumly. That meant lots of staring.   
  
“Arthapolis,” the Doctor introduced with a flourish. “Come on, hurry up. Best not to linger too long.”  
  
“Why?” Martha asked as they followed him away from the TARDIS. Sure enough, the moment they stepped out of the reach of the TARDIS’s perception filter people began to notice them. Heads turned, eyebrows shot towards hairlines, and fingers were pointed. She saw a blue-skinned girl hold up something that resembled a camera and a tiny red light on the front blipped once.  
  
“Arthapolis is a hotspot for time travellers, particularly Time Agents. And not just Jack’s Agency,” he added before Rose could ask. “There will be similar foundations throughout history founded by aliens and humans alike. Arthapolis is where a lot of them come if they want to experience the Second Golden Age of Earth. That’s the 230th through the 233rd centuries, by the way, so we’re somewhere in there.”  
  
Suddenly the inquisitive looks they were getting took on a whole new light. “They know we’re time travelers.”  
  
“Oh, yes.”  
  
Martha smiled at someone then leaned closer to the Doctor. “Can we talk to them?” she muttered.  
  
“I don’t see why not. I expect someone will stop you and ask for your name, planet and city of origin, and year of birth. If you’re from the past they can search the databanks and learn about you. If you turned out to be famous or important and they can add you to do the database as a known time traveler.” At her surprised look, he laughed once. “This is their culture, Martha. They were raised to expect visitors from other times. They might question you about your time and what time travelling is like but they won’t ask to come along because it’s rude. It’d be like you approaching a celebrity for their autograph, maybe asking them a few questions. But you wouldn’t very well ask if you could follow them home.”   
  
“Makes sense.”   
  
“So what are we looking for?” Rose asked.  
  
“A Traveller’s Depot. They’ve got lots of useful things. Clothing from different eras, parts, language helpers–everything your visiting time traveller might need. There are three of them in the city, hidden underneath three completely unrelated businesses. Very low key, very high security. Can’t have just anyone gaining access to all that technology. They only sell to with people who have traces of atron energy in them in case one of the citizens finds the Depot.”  
  
“But how do we find them if they’re hidden?”  
  
“You can’t,” he said. “Only time-sensitive beings can track them down or those equipped with time-sensitive technology. Jack’s vortex manipulator, for example, could lead him to a Depot. Any other time travellers who come through here, if they need a depot, use their own technology. I, on the other hand, can find them on my own. No need, though. I’ve been here before and I know where one is. We’re close. Just a few blocks over.”  
  
When he said the Depot was hidden, he meant hidden. The building they walked into was not a Depot of any sort. It was a coffee shop.  
  
“Twenty thousand years and they still have coffee shops.” Martha remarked.  
  
“Well, they don’t sell coffee, but other than that, yeah.”   
  
The Doctor approached the counter and smiled pleasantly at the middle-aged woman with cinnamon skin and pink hair working it. “Hello.”  
  
She looked him up and down once then over his shoulder at Rose and Martha. “Welcome. What can I get you?”  
  
“Can we use your restroom?”  
  
She nodded and pointed at the back corner of the shop. “Third door on your left.”   
  
“Thank you very much.” He motioned for his companions to follow him. They walked down the hallway she’d indicated, pausing to let a startled patron pass. He looked around carefully to make sure no one was watching and then he placed his hand on a scanner on the door.   
  
The scanner chirped softly and the door hissed quietly before sliding open, revealing a single staircase. He ushered them in quickly and the door slid shut behind them, hissing again as it sealed shut. They headed down the stairs to another blank door with a scanner identical to the one above. The Doctor placed his hand on it once more. A few chirps and hisses later they were standing in a large underground warehouse. Five rows of shelves and containers stretched out before them for the span of a city block containing everything from currency, to clothes, to various bits of technology and parts.   
  
A cheerful melody of electric humming, whistling, and clicking filled the air accompanied by wordless background music.   
  
“Are we alone?” Rose whispered.  
  
“Not likely,” the Doctor whispered back then raised his voice. “HELLO!”   
  
His bellow echoed through the Depot, rebounding off of every surface and magnifying until it reached ever corner of the room.  
  
“That should do,” he decided.   
  
“Sorrit’s sake, son!” a deep called. A man emerged from the fourth isle, similar to the woman from upstairs, with cinnamon skin that wasn’t quite human and pink hair. He wore a deep green tunic, shorts, and what looked like a pair of 21st century yellow flip-flops. “There’s no need for shouting. I heard you come in. The name’s Cantor. I’m gonna need your names, your years, and planets of origin.”  
  
“Years?” Martha asked.  
  
“What year do you come from?”  
  
“We’re from the early 2000s, Earth. I’m Martha.”   
  
“Rose.” She gave a little wave.  
  
Cantor raised his eyebrows. “Early 2000s–the Emergence Era? I wasn’t aware you had time travel technology.”  
  
“They don’t. They travel with me.” the Doctor stuffed his hands in his pocket. He seemed to be waiting for something. Cantor squinted at him.  
  
“That you, Doctor?”  
  
The Doctor beamed. “I was wondering how long it’d take you this time. You got older.”  
  
“You got younger,” he snorted. “That’s really not fair. What number are you on?”  
  
“This is my tenth.”   
  
Cantor frowned and Rose was surprised by how much the man seemed to know about Time Lords. But, then again, this was a hub for time travellers. “I hope that means it’s been centuries for you, Doctor.”   
  
“Not…exactly…”   
  
“You’re burning through them fast.”  
  
“Yes, well, you’ll be happy to know that I have no plans to regenerate again for a while. I have it on good authority that this is a very nice body.”   
  
Martha snorted quietly.   
  
Cantor glanced at her. “So, what happened to the girl you were travelling with last time? A–um, wait, don’t tell me. Acer.”  
  
“Ace,” the Doctor corrected. “She’s back home in her time. Runs a charity now.”  
  
 _Ace,_ Rose thought and filed the name away for later like she always did on the rare occasions she was able to garner information about the Doctor’s life before her, before the War. _Sarah Jane. Ian and Barbara. Peri. Jamie. Dodo. Adric. The Brigadier._  
  
“I was close. Good for her. So, I’m assuming you’re here for parts again?”  
  
“Correct. We had to make a quick escape and a few things got fried.”  
  
“Well, hopefully I’ve got what you need.”   
  
“Wait a minute.” Martha interrupted. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that you’ve got a place you can visit any old time you need TARDIS parts. So how come you landed on that planet a few weeks ago and got yourself arrested for stealing?”  
  
Cantor barked a laugh.  
  
“Because the parts I needed then weren’t the kind that turn up here. Besides, I knew it was likely I’d have to steal or use psychic paper, and Cantor’s an old friend. I’m not going to try and knick stuff.”  
  
“Glad to hear.” Cantor paused, licked his lips once, and lowered his voice. “Doctor, I’m glad you turned up. There’s something… I–I’ve been listening to stories, you know, like I always do. Travellers come through and some talk about a war. A war throughout time itself. This one young woman said…she said that Gallifrey…”  
  
The Doctor’s expression was dangerously flat. He said nothing. Rose lightly stroked the back of the Doctor’s hand with her fingers.  
  
Cantor’s eyes flicked between them with interest, noting the way they stood, and the way he relaxed at her touch. He did his best not to smile. Who would’ve thought? Certainly not him, for sure. The older than dirt Time Lord had managed to fall for a young human girl. Now that was a story he wanted to hear sometime.   
  
“They’re gone,” he said. “Gallifrey, the Time Lords, the Daleks, and thousands of other species and worlds. All gone.”  
  
“But you’re still here.”  
  
“I’m the very last. I was the one that ended it all.”  
  
“ _Sorrit_ ,” the man whispered, horrified.   
  
The four of them were silent for a moment as they each processed the information and tried to comprehend the magnitude of something incomprehensible and the Doctor let them. Then he swallowed, sniffed once, and the cheerful mask was back in place. “So. Parts?”


	34. Cardiff

  
After leaving the Depot, it took the rest of the day and most of the night for the Doctor to repair the TARDIS. He only stopped working twice: once when Martha brought him a tray of food and ordered him to eat and again when he went to curl up with Rose as she fell asleep. He loathed breaking their nightly routine even with urgent maintenance to be done. It helped him relax after a stressful day and she fell asleep quicker. Plus he loved the feel of her warm body snuggled against his. When the repairs were done he decided a refuel was in order. That meant they were headed to Cardiff.  
  
“I don’t understand, why Cardiff?” Martha asked.  
  
“It’s got a rift underneath it.” The Doctor explained as he flipped the controls to open up the engines. “And not just any rift–a rift in time and space. Just like California and the San Andreas Fault.”  
  
“But how do you know about it?”  
  
“It’s a long story.” Rose said. “But we were here in 1869. These creatures called the Gelth were using it to try and take over the world but this girl, Gwenyth, saved the world and closed it. That was my first trip to the past,” she added with a small smile. “Met Charles Dickens.”  
  
The Doctor flipped one final switch the leaned on the console. “But, like with a deep wound, rifts never will completely vanish There’re always scars left over that can be reopened, by force or by accident. When opened, the rift _bleeds_ energy. Every now and then I need to open up the engines, soak up the energy, and use it as fuel.”  
  
Rose tilted her head back and inhaled slowly. It was one of those rare moments without any outside stress that she could feel along with the TARDIS. The ship absorbed the yummy rift energy and power raced through her weary systems; Rose’s blood tingled. She hadn’t realized she’d been feeling tired until now. There had been an uncomfortable itchy feeling before when some of the key systems were down, which she also hadn’t really noticed until it was gone, but no exhaustion. Now she felt more alert than she had since they first ran away from the Family.   
  
She wanted out. She wanted to run. She wanted to run far and fast and feel the wind on her face and laugh and whoop and not stop until she had to.  
  
The TARDIS hummed happily in her mind, encouraging her.  
  
“So it’s a pit stop.” Martha realized.  
  
“Exactly.”   
  
“Wait a minute. They had an earthquake in Cardiff a couple years ago. Was that you two?”  
  
“Bit of trouble with the Slitheen. We sorted it.”  
  
“Of course you did,” she said. “So how long are we here for?”   
  
“Oh, maybe an hour or two should do.” he replied after a moment. “It’s midday outside. Should we get something to eat?”  
  
“Sounds good to me. Rose? …Rose?”  
  
Rose stared blankly into space. Concerned, Martha leaned over and snapped her fingers in front of her eyes. Rose blinked rapidly and her eyes crossed, focusing on the fingers in the center of her vision. “Sorry, what?”  
  
“We’re gonna go get dinner while the TARDIS charges. Are you alright?”  
  
“I’m fine. I’m just…” she stopped, unable to find the right word to explain what she was feeling. “Awake. I didn’t even realize we were tired.”  
  
“We?” the Doctor asked sharply.   
  
“Me and the TARDIS. I didn’t even realize before.”   
  
“Explains why you were laying around so much,” Martha said.   
  
“I was not.”   
  
“That is so weird, though. She was drained so you felt tired. Now she’s getting all juiced up and you feel awake. How is that even possible? It’s just a ship.”  
  
“But the TARDIS is alive, remember that.” the Doctor said. “And once upon a time…” he looked at Rose then patted the console, right on the place where it lifted to reveal the Heart. “Rose held her heart.”  
  
“Hang on.” Martha held up her hand. “You’ve never properly explained this to me, and if you really don’t want to that’s fine, but I really want to know. You told me there was a Dalek army about to destroy the Earth and to save you and everyone, Rose absorbed the Heart of the TARDIS.”  
  
“Correct.”  
  
“What is the Heart?”  
  
The Doctor breathed in deeply through his nose and then exhaled slowly. “That…is not an easy question to answer. Not in English, at any rate.”  
  
“Try.”  
  
“Alright. Rose absorbed the Heart of the TARDIS.” he looked between them. “I was speaking Vicran just now. Their species understood time in a way few others ever could or will, Time Lords notwithstanding. Their language has words similar enough to the Gallifreyan meanings that could get my point across. But you don’t speak Vicran so the TARDIS automatically translated it into your native tongues using the words that best match the intended Vicran meanings.”  
  
“So even if you explain it an adequate language, it’ll still be like you’re talking in English.” Martha deduced.   
  
“Yes. And if I explained it to you in Gallifreyan, the TARDIS wouldn’t even translate.”  
  
“Then explain it as best you can in English,” Rose said. “I want to know.”  
  
The Doctor sighed and ran his hand over his mouth. He thought about it for a long minute before speaking. “When I say ‘the Heart of the TARDIS’ I am referring to either one specific half of the Heart or its entirety. There is the physical Heart–her core. Her engine. That’s all parts, metal, organic matter. It’s a physical place we could go to, we can see it, touch it, or repair it if needed. It’s the first part of her to fully form underneath her shell. Removing it would kill her. ”  
  
The TARDIS rumbled around them, sounding eerily similar to a growl. The Doctor flinched. This wasn’t a topic she liked. Not that anyone onboard right now would hurt her, but it was never comfortable for any living thing to hear someone talk about how to kill it.  
  
“And the other part,” he went on, “is her soul. Her power, her consciousness: everything that makes her alive. And it’s all right under here.” He patted the console. “And the Heart also refers to her entire core system–the incorporeal and the corporeal. Gallifreyan has words to describe them individually and together. But when I say Rose absorbed the Heart of the TARDIS, I’m referring to the part that is the TARDIS’s soul. It contains her power–the time vortex–as well as her consciousness.”  
  
He paused, letting it all sink in. A small tremble passed through Rose and she crossed her arms over her chest. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”  
  
He looked surprised. “I thought I did.”  
  
“Never like this.” She licked her lips. “But how does that explain why I can feel her this way?”  
  
“Because when you absorbed her Heart, you two became one. Two minds and souls in the same body. You formed a bond during that time that I…I don’t understand it. I share a deep bond with the TARDIS but this is different. I barely understand it and can’t even begin to draw comparisons.”  
  
“But you held the Heart too,” Rose reminded him. “You took it out of me.”  
  
“You held it for minutes, became the Bad Wolf, and did so much. I held onto it for seconds and all I did was heal the damage to your body. Plus, you were an ordinary human, completely unused to being exposed to the power of time. I was neither. The difference between our situations is…” He trailed off and pursed his lips.   
  
Then he cleared his throat loudly, jumping away from the console. “So, there’s a nice restaurant not too far from here. I think you both…” he paused as he rifled through his pockets, “…should probably change. Well, I thought I might’ve had a few pounds on me. Either of you got some money or should we stop by a cash point?”  
  
“Cash point,” Martha said. She’d come a long way from being horrified at his methods of acquiring cash. “You go get the money, we’ll get changed and meet your outside.”  
  
The Doctor bounded down the ramp and opened the door. He stepped out and breathed in deeply, then called over his shoulder, “By the way, it feels like summer out here and I can’t smell any rain.”  
  
“Thank you!”   
  
Martha and Rose went into the wardrobe to find something decent to wear. The TARDIS helped as she usually did, guiding them with flickering lights to the third floor and myriad of warm weather clothes. Some of them were clearly not meant for early 21st century Earth and others were not right for an afternoon in Cardiff. Knowing full well the Doctor would come hassle them if they took too long they each made their selections quickly. Martha chose a shin-length white button up dress with a lapel collar and a gray band around the waist. Rose’s dress was watermelon pink with spaghetti straps, a layered bottom, and lace trim.  
  
Once they found appropriate shoes they headed outside. The Doctor had yet to return from the cashpoint so they waited by the TARDIS. Rose fiddled with her necklace absentmindedly as she watched the people pass them on the Roald Dahl Plass. The ship hummed happily behind her and the wood felt warmer than normal against the skin of her back.   
  
“Do you think I’ll ever find someone like that?” Martha asked.  
  
“What?”   
  
“Someone I’d be willing to die to save?”  
  
“Yes,” Rose replied without hesitating. “He’s out there. You just have to find him.”  
  
Martha hummed once in agreement. She cast her eyes along the Plass again to look for the Doctor and she noticed a young woman across the way sitting at one of the tables. She was Asian though it was difficult to tell much else about her appearance from a distance. She was dressed for look the outfit looked like one she could run in if need be. And she was staring straight at them, which shouldn’t have been possible. Leaning against the TARDIS as they were they should’ve been protected by the perception filter.  
  
“Rose,” she muttered, trying to keep her lips still. “One o’clock. Asian woman on her mobile, I think she can see us.”  
  
Rose turned to look but the woman in question had shifted and was rubbing her eyes. When she lowered her hand she fixed her eyes on a point in the distance nowhere near the TARDIS. She must’ve been just staring into space. They relaxed.  
  
A few minutes later the Doctor came jogging down the Plass and the met him halfway. “Ready to go?” he asked when they were close. “I went to check if there were any open seats and I think the lunch crowd is almost gone.”  
  
Rose smiled. “Great.”  
  
He cleared his throat loudly and placed his arms behind his back. “Miss Tyler, Miss Jones, would you care to accompany me to lunch?”  
  
The two women glanced at each other. “I think we will, Mister Smith,” Martha replied.  
  
She grinned and so did he and Rose slid her arm around his. Martha nudged him playfully before the three of them set off to the restaurant.   
  
The Asian woman watched them go with her phone still pressed to ear. They were so happy, the time travelling trio. They had no idea what was coming. No idea what was about to happen to them. Because if she remembered the story correctly then this was _the_ stop in Cardiff they’d made just before it happened. They were off to lunch now. They’d order chicken, lasagna, and fish. The Doctor would discover he hated smoked salmon and he’d spit it onto his plate and nearly get them kicked out.  
  
 _“Tosh? You there?”_  
  
Toshiko shook her head quickly. “Yes, I’m here.”  
  
 _“So was it them?”_  
  
“Yes. They just left with a tall man wearing a brown suit.”  
  
 _“Sounds about right.”_ there was a pause. _“But how did they look?”_  
  
“I told you they’re wearing a dress.”  
  
 _“No, I meant how did they look at him?”_  
  
“Well, Rose…I think she smiled. I was too far to see much but even the other woman, Martha, was happy to be near him.”  
  
 _“Then it’s the Doctor alright. Stay there, wait for them to come back, but don’t approach them. I’ll call Suzie and Owen and let them know, too.”_  
  
“Jack, I…” Tosh felt tears welling in her eyes. “They were so happy. Can’t I–can’t I warn them?”  
  
 _“No,”_ Jack growled. _“Don’t talk to them, don’t go near them, don’t even make eye contact with them again. It has to happen. You stop it and you could cause a paradox big enough to blow a hole in the universe. Do you understand?”_  
  
“I understand. But, Jack, something’s been bothering me. Did she say where it happened? Are they coming here?”  
  
 _“I don’t know. …I’ll call everyone in, just in case. You stay there until I call you. Let me know immediately if they leave.”_ He hung up.  
  
Tosh closed her phone and pressed it against her lips. A tear trickled down her cheek as she thought of the smiles, the laughter, the way he’d held Rose close but hadn’t completely shut out Martha. She shook her head quickly and set her phone on the table, pulling her laptop out of her bag. A meal and light shopping would probably take well over an hour. Might as well get a bit of work done while she waited. Apparently that blue box fed off of rift energy. It would be interesting to see how that affected things.   
  
Sometime later, Tosh was knee deep in scan results, trying to create a short a three-dimensional model depicting how the ship absorbed energy. She was able to track the movement of energy just fine but when she tried to scan the blue box to figure out where inside the energy went to, her scanner would work for a few seconds and then simply…stop. It was as if there was nothing in there to scan. Completely impossible, of course, because she knew there was an entire world inside those walls.   
  
Maybe one day she could see it for herself.   
  
“Jack have you monitoring them?”  
  
Tosh jumped in her seat. She looked up at Owen who grinned. Her heart fluttered in her chest. _No, don’t,_ she told herself. _Not a good idea. He’s only just stopped fooling around with Suzie._  
  
“Owen,” she greeted with a smile and looked away quickly. “No, he hasn’t got me monitoring them, just their ship.”  
  
Owen cast his eyes out across the Plass. “Where is it?”  
  
“On top of our elevator. Took me a minute to see it. Stop–you’re looking right at it.”  
  
Owen squinted, his nose twitching in agitation, and then his mouth puckered. “Well,” he laughed once to himself. “Fuck me, there it is. The blue police box.”  
  
He pulled the chair out from the table and sat down next to her, folding his hands on the table. He glanced at her computer screen and tapped it. “What’s this?”  
  
“I’m working on a 3D model that shows how the ship absorbs the energy into its systems. Trouble is, I can’t get a reading on the interior on my scanner. It’s like there’s nothing there.”  
  
“Well,” he said slowly. “Didn’t Jack say it was dimensionally transcendental?”   
  
Tosh’s eyes widened and possibilities raced through her mind. “So, there really isn’t anything inside, not in the way my scanner is set to recognize.” she realized. “That door is a gateway to another dimension. That’s…remarkable. Can you imagine what we could do with that kind of technology?”   
  
“Rob banks, steal things, conceal weapons…”  
  
She sighed and fiddling with her scanner to detect the other dimension. “Well, if you’re going to be a pessimist.”   
  
“I’m not being a pessimist, Tosh, I’m just saying, that’s not the kind of technology we want people possibly getting their hands on.” He frowned, staring at it. “I wonder if we could get inside it.”  
  
Tosh looked up in alarm. “Don’t you even dare!”  
  
“I won’t go in, I just want to see.” Owen pushed his chair back and stood up but Tosh grabbed his wrist.  
  
“They could be back any time now. Jack said we couldn’t interfere or we might cause a paradox.”  
  
Owen sighed and sat back down. “Fine.”   
  
Confident that Owen wouldn’t risk it, Tosh went back to adjusting her scanner. Just a few tweaks and it should work. If she couldn’t get an image of the interior nearest to the door then she could at least get a basic idea.   
  
“Did you want to interfere?” Owen asked. “With them.”  
  
Tosh’s fingers froze. She looked up and sighed before setting her scanner down. “Yes, of course. It’s been months, Owen, and this is the first time we’ve seen the TARDIS, Canary Wharf aside. Don’t you realize what day it is for them?”  
  
He scoffed, “No. Unlike you, Tosh, I have better things to do than listen to mad stories about time and space travel.”   
  
“Owen, this is the day that what they’re running from catches up with them.”  
  
“Oh, yeah. Jack said something might go down today. Is that what this is all about?”  
  
She nodded.   
  
“Terrific. Once again the Doctor and Rose cause us a shitload of trouble.”  
  
“Owen!” she exclaimed. “What happened to Torchwood One was not their fault. They did that to themselves.”  
  
“Yeah, but they were there.” he growled. “You saw the CCTV feeds. They walked right past people calling for help. People _dying_. And what did they do? Absolutely nothing. Think about it, Tosh. Think about all those people we dug out, all those names we added to the list of the dead. How many of them might’ve lived if the wonderful heroes had helped instead of wal–”  
  
BOOM!  
  
The world around them shook violently. Owen fell over sideways and Tosh just barely saved her laptop from falling to its death before they both hit the ground. Owen lifted his head, swearing like a field. Tosh stuffed her laptop into her bag before she clambered to her feet. Owen grabbed her arm to steady her and the two of them looked at each other in horror then looked in the direction the explosion had come from. A huge back column of smoke rose the air and all around them were the sounds of terror.   
  
“Shit,” he breathed.   
  
Tosh gulped. “It’s started.”  
  
“Really? Thanks Tosh, I had no idea.”


	35. Found and Lost

  
Something pinged the back of her mind. It hadn’t come from the TARDIS, not exactly. It was more of a reaction to something the TARDIS had sensed. Like the nausea from the Carrionite’s magic or the tingling when a telepathic being other than the Doctor tried to communicate with the TARDIS.   
  
Rose stopped walking, cocking her head to the side curiously. While reacting with the TARDIS was nothing new, that pinging thing was. It wasn’t pain, it didn’t carry any sense of urgency, and a quick look around didn’t reveal anything out of the ordinary. As if that ever helped her figure out what these things mean. She shook her head. She was about to call the Docotr away from that shop window when she felt it.   
  
The TARDIS was afraid. Oh so very, **_afraid_**. It triggered an adrenaline rush like she’d never felt before. She gasped loudly and the bag she held slipped from her fingers. Dimly, she was aware of Martha standing right in front of Rose, demanding to know what was wrong. Then the Doctor was there and he was asking, too.   
  
But the TARDIS was showing her a series of images. A glowing green ship streaking through the sky, an overhead view of Cardiff, her face, the Doctor’s, and Martha’s; then Martha and the Doctor racing in to the TARDIS and a laser firing over their heads. _“Get down!” the Doctor shouted_ and _“These creatures, they’re…they’re telepathic parasites. When they’re in a familial unit of four like the group after us, they’re called a ‘Family of Blood.’”_  
  
They’d found them.   
  
She blinked, looking at her love and her friend, and she was so afraid, and _they found us_ , and they were open out here and exposed, and they could come at any minute. So she did the only thing that made sense. She grabbed their hands and ran.   
  
They didn’t get far before something exploded.   
  
The Doctor had known seconds before the shop exploded what would happen. Maybe the TARDIS had warned him as well. Because when the shop exploded she was pressed the wall with Martha and the Doctor’s body was curled around them protectively. When the shaking stopped the Doctor lifted his head and shook the broken glass from his hair. The shop they had been in not two minutes ago had been reduced to a smoking heap of rubble. The air stank with the stench of smoke, the stench of burning flesh, and something like ozone–the sure sign of a laser blast.   
  
“What’s happening?” Martha cried.  
  
“It’s them,” Rose gasped, finally finding her voice. “The Family.”   
  
“But we lost them!”  
  
“I guess not,” the Doctor growled. “Our escape attempt was a long shot to begin with. They must have locked onto the TARDIS itself.” He stepped away from the wall and grabbed their hands. “Come on!”  
  
They ran for their lives through the crowds of screaming and panicking humans. The Doctor kept his hands locked around theirs so they wouldn’t be separated even as people shoved past them. Sirens wailed in the distance and police officers raced towards the destruction.   
  
Rose’s heart thrummed in her chest and the TARDIS sang in her head. An image of the building they’d just run past exploding flared in her mind. Five seconds later it actually happened. Everyone in the vicinity went flying from the force of the explosion. Rose screamed as her hand slipped from the Doctor’s.  
  
Pain exploded in her side as she collided with the ground. She rolled a few times, finally stopping on her back. She gasped for air, her ears full of nothing but ringing for a few seconds before the garbled screams filtered in. Above her the sun shined bright and happy. She lay there, gasping in pain and surprise, until she registered the Doctor shouting at her. His face appeared above her, twisted in fear, and he pulled her to her feet.   
  
He pulled her forward and she caught a glimpse of Martha’s dark skin on his other side.   
  
Another building exploded behind them and they were knocked to their knees. Rose whimpered in pain but the Doctor didn’t even give her a chance to gather her wits before he was hauling her up. He pulled Martha up next and Rose winced when she saw the wet redness seeping through her friend’s white dress. The Doctor looked them up and down once then started pulling them along.   
  
Finding her voice, Rose shouted, “We have to help!”   
  
“We can’t!”   
  
“People are dying!”  
  
“I know!”  
  
Rose gritted her teeth, slammed on the brakes, and jerked her hand free of the Doctor’s. He whirled around, letting go of Martha, and marched towards her. “Come on!” he snapped.  
  
She folded her arms. “NO! People are _dying_ , Doctor! We can’t just leave!”  
  
“Yes we can and we are.” When she didn’t move, he seized her by her upper arms. “Don’t you understand, Rose? They’re after _us_! If you want to help them then we need to get into the vortex. They should follow us.”   
  
“And if they don’t?”  
  
“Rose, we can’t face them outright. If we stay and hide they’ll possess people and sniff us out and they’ll kill everyone they have to until they do! We have to go!”  
  
She reached up and grabbed his hand. “Okay.”  
  
The Doctor nodded, held his other hand out to Martha, and the three of them started running again. Another explosion knocked them down but this time Rose pushed herself up immediately and bolted. Her body’s natural adrenaline combined with the energy buzz from the TARDIS made her feel like she was flying. She didn’t realize she’d let go of the Doctor’s hand until they reached the Plass and then immediately locked her fingers around his.   
  
Another explosion rang out behind them as Rose shoved her key into the lock. The moment the door was open he thrust them both inside. He raced past them and immediately started to stop the absorbing process. He had the TARDIS release a burst of artron energy to gain the Family’s attention before throwing the switch to send them into the vortex. A moment later the screen registered the ship entering the vortex behind them and he smiled darkly.  
  
“They’re following us,” he reported. He glanced up at them briefly before looking back at the screen. Then what he’d seen registered and his head snapped up.   
  
Their dresses were ragged and their skins were covered in abrasions and lacerations. Martha’s dress had blood on it and he wasn’t sure all of it was hers. There was also a cut above her eye that was bleeding profusely that she didn’t seem to notice. Rose had an ugly bruise forming on her arm and her eyes were fading back to their normal brown. Plus on top of all that they were covered there was dust and debris from head to toe.  
  
His fingers tightened on the console and he looked down. He needed to keep ahead of them while he took care of his companions. If they were going to try and shake the Family off again then he needed their help. The Old Girl had several autopilot modes, some activated automatically during different types of emergencies, others he had to manually activate. He racked his brain for one that would be useful at the moment.   
  
Oh. There was one. He’d designed it two bodies ago in the early stages of the Time War. Since some of their foes were able to chase them through the vortex he’d come up with a setting that told the TARDIS to flee within the vortex in any direction she needed to avoid being compromised in the event he was unable to pilot himself. As an extra precaution, he’d programmed it to activate automatically if he lost consciousness while on the run. He’d never had a reason to use it during the War and afterwards removing autopilot modes wasn’t high on his list of priorities.   
  
Now if he could just remember the entry code for it.  
  
“You two go to the infirmary, I’ll be right there. Martha, you need to apply compression to that cut above your eye.”  
  
Martha reached up and fingered the cut. She pulled her hand away and stared at the blood on her fingertips. “Oh.”  
  
She swayed slightly.   
  
The Doctor dug around in his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, handing it to Rose. “She’s losing a lot of blood. Hold that on firmly. We don’t want her passing out.”  
  
Rose did as he ordered and wrapped her other arm around Martha’s shoulders. “Come on, Dr. Jones.”  
  
He watched them go. When they were out of sight he turned back to the console. “Think, think, think,” he muttered, hitting his head furiously. It would’ve been something simple. Something he could easily remember but few others would guess.   
  
“Oh,” he murmured. Jumping over to the keyboard, he typed in three letters. In Gallifreyan that particular combination of letters was a suffix commonly used to describe actions that occurred one’s fifth regeneration.   
  
_R-U-N_  
  
The TARDIS hummed around him and the ship trembled as she prepared to follow never before used programming. He pulled the screen around and both watched and felt the ship accelerate. Millions of years forward, then billions back, a hundred forward, two million back. She raced through the vortex like a fish through the sea, completely in her element. The Family were still tracking her, there was no way to prevent it, but there was no chance they’d catch her.  
  
“That’s it, Old Girl!” he shouted. “Keep it up for as long as you can!”  
  
When he got to the infirmary, Martha was sitting on the examination table while Rose tended to her wounds. She’d already cleaned the cut on her forehead and was working on the bad scrapes on her knees. She didn’t seem to notice or even care about the state she herself was in. He shucked his coat, tossing it over a chair, and joined her by the table. He picked up a cotton ball, dipping it in the disinfectant, and started to deal with the abrasions on her arm.   
  
“Did we get away?” Martha croaked as he brushed the cotton across the cut on her hand.  
  
“Not exactly,” he said. “Right now the TARDIS is leading them around in circles.”  
  
“Are we going to do the jumping thing again?”  
  
“That’s the plan, yes. But I can’t do it alone.” He set it down then went to get the dermal regenerator and set it to ‘human.’   
  
Rose, meanwhile, was in deep thought. She knew her silence hadn’t escaped the Doctor’s notice but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She moved mechanically, hopping onto the table and cleaning her own wounds as the Doctor helped Martha with the regenerator. The medicine stung and she knew she deserved the pain.   
  
All those people. How many were injured or killed in the explosions? They’d been shopping in the first building mere minutes before it had exploded. And it had been crowded, too, with men, women, and children alike. There’d been a man buying a present for his daughter. One of the women had been pregnant. There were three children that had been laughing loudly and admiring the sparkly jewelry. They all would’ve still been in there when it went up. And how many people had been in the other shops? Or just outside of them but caught in the explosions anyway?  
  
The sting of the medicine suddenly become unbearably potent, the smell of the drying blood too strong, and the lights too bright. Her stomach did backflips and the cotton fell from her fingers. She didn’t realize she was running until she was already out of the room. The Doctor might’ve called after her. She might have cared.   
  
She ran without direction, letting the TARDIS rearrange itself around her into an endless maze until her already sore muscles were screaming, her wounds stung, and her chest heaved. Then the first door she opened lead to her room. Her dress was ripped and dirty and stained with drying blood, some of it hers, some of it Martha’s. She yanked it up and over her head, tossed it to the side, and then collapsed on her bed. Pulling her legs up to her chest, she pressed her face into her knees and cried.  
  
That was how the Doctor found her a few minutes later. He wrapped her pink blanket around her shoulders and held her. He whispered comfortingly into her ear while his hands stroked her arms and back. Her sobbing increased in volume before she gradually allowed his gestures to soothe her and her body stopped shuddering.   
  
Cardiff had proved they couldn’t run from the Family. When the Doctor said they could follow them right across the universe she hadn’t realized it meant they _would_. Some people would do anything to gain eternity, whether it meant making a bunch of Horcruxes or chasing a Time Lord through time. And they wouldn’t ever stop until they had him or they were dead. Nowhere they landed would be safe until then. There was nothing to prevent another massacre.  
  
And he’d warned her, dammit, but she hadn’t cared. Stupid, selfish her. Her desires were not more important than the world. She’d forgotten and all those people had died for it.   
  
“Doctor?” she mumbled.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“How did they track us today?”  
  
“I’m not entirely sure, but my theory is they emerged near the TARDIS’s location then tracked my location through my scent. Actually…I wouldn’t be surprised if they have both your scents now, too.”  
  
“And could you disguise our scents?”   
  
“Yours, yes,” he said. “It’d be very simple if you were among humans.”   
  
“But not yours?”  
  
He shook his head. “No. Not indefinitely. There is something I can do to make myself smell human; it’s bit like ventriloquism but with the nose and not the mouth. But that would only work for a few minutes at best. For you two I can rig something that will cause your natural scent to be distorted by those around you. The same way you could blend in with a crowd of blondes.”  
  
“Why wouldn’t that work for you?” she asked.   
  
“Because I don’t smell human, Rose. If I was hiding among my people then, yes, it would work. Although,” he added, wrinkling his nose, “considering they’re after me because I’m a Time Lord, I don’t think hiding in a group of Time Lords would be very helpful even if I could.”  
  
She swallowed. “But that Chameleon Arch. If it made you human, would they be able to track your location even if they landed?”  
  
“No.”  
  
Rose closed her eyes and exhaled shakily before twisting in his grip and pulling his face down to hers. He was surprised at first but then he was kissing her sweetly and stroking her cheek with one hand, giving silent reassurances that he was there, that it was going to be okay, that they could get through this without that silly machine, but that wasn’t what she wanted. She didn’t want a gentle lie. They’d allowed themselves to believe they were safe, forgetting the ferocity of the drive to survive, and now it was blowing up in their faces. Things weren’t going to be okay and she was going to lose him.   
  
So she pressed against him, sliding her hands into his hair, and tugged gently. He responded with a low sound in his throat and she decided she wanted to hear it again. When she nipped at his lip he seemed to understand what she wanted. His hand slipped lower, pulling her closer, and he deepened the kiss.   
  
When she had to stop for breath he kept right on, peppering her face with kisses then continuing down her throat. She shivered, scraping her fingers across his scalp, and he made that sound again. She filed that away for later.   
  
His lips returned to her mouth and the hand that had previously been on her back came up to cup her cheek. Without anything to hold it in place, the blanket fell from her shoulders. Startled by the sudden chill, she arched into him but he didn’t seem to notice, drawing her lower lip into his mouth. But then one of his hands slipped down to her waist again and he realized what happened and he pulled away.  
  
Their foreheads pressed together as they both struggled to catch their breath. He reached behind her and pulled the blanket around her again. She almost shouldered him off. Considering she was about to go for an indefinite amount of time without him, she didn’t give a damn about her modesty. In her opinion they were both wearing too many layers. But his eyes never left hers as he tucked the blanket around her and something in them pleaded with her not to push. That now wasn’t the time for more.  
  
Well, now seemed like the perfect time, thank you very much. But she didn’t know how long the TARDIS could run from the Family and still have enough in her to work the Chameleon Arch. There hadn’t been enough time to completely refuel, after all. She wasn’t sure how it worked but rewriting an entire biology didn’t sound like an easy task.   
  
So she took a deep breath and swallowed. “Do it.”  
  
“What?” he whispered, confused.  
  
“The Chameleon Arch.”  
  
“Rose–” he started to protest and reached up to touch her cheek. She jerked away from him.   
  
“How many people died today, Doctor?” she demanded. “Forty? Fifty? More ‘en that? We can run but if they can track the TARDIS then they’ll just keep catchin’ up. How many more people can we let die? You…you have to do it.”  
  
He was silent for a long minute. “I thought you didn’t want to see someone in my body.”  
  
“I don’t. _God_ , you have no idea how much I don’t, but that’s why those people died today.”  
  
“Don’t do that,” he ordered. “Don’t you blame yourself for this. _Please_ , Rose.” He tilted her face up and his eyes searched hers. “Are you sure you want me to do this?”  
  
“We don’t really have a choice here.”  
  
The Doctor sighed. “Alright then. I’ll do it.”  
  
Tears welled in her eyes and he brushed them away with his thumb before they could really fall. “It’ll be okay,” he murmured. “It’s not forever. Remember, I told you they don’t live very long, and if they’re pursuing me this viciously then it can only mean that the senior members are running out of time in their natural lifespans Three months should be long enough. That’s all. Just three months.”  
  
She nodded. “What’s going to happen to you?”   
  
“Well...” he took a deep breath. “I’ve never done this before so I can only tell you what I’ve heard from other Time Lords or read. The Arch has four functions all linked together. First it establishes a link between my mind and a fob watch–I’ll show it to you later–so as it’s rewriting my biology it can slowly transfer my consciousness into the watch. They say it’s like being asleep. As my consciousness is transferred my basic human persona is created and around that the TARDIS finds me a place in history to fit the persona. Once she does that the finer details are developed. When it’s over I’ll be unconscious for a few minutes as everything settles and gets adjusted. After that I’ll wake up and walk out of the TARDIS. I won’t even see you. And you mustn’t touch me, speak to me, or make any sort of contact after I wake up or you’ll snap me out of it. Just let me leave. I’ll come to on my own when I reach a certain distance from the TARDIS.”  
  
She nodded again. “Alright. And what about us?”  
  
“The TARDIS can’t find a place for you two, I’m afraid. Although–” his eyes twinkled with faint amusement “–I wouldn’t be surprised if she chooses somewhere that accommodates you as well. If not, well, I should have enough residual awareness to let you and Martha in.”  
  
The possible scenarios raced through her mind. What if the TARDIS made the human man believe they were dating or married? Her stomach rolled at the thought of having to pretend to be in love with the human who looked like the Doctor. Oh, God, what if she actually _did_ fall in love with him? She’d have to choose at the end.  
  
 _Please, please, please,_ she begged the TARDIS. _Don’t make me go through that._   
  
The distress on her face did not escape his notice. He slid his arms around her again, pulled her close, and rubbed her back. She tucked her head under his chin and pressed her face into his chest, breathing in deeply. They really should move. The sooner he changed the sooner he could comeback. But would be three months before she could have this again and wasn’t quite ready to leave his arms.   
  
“Rose, will you do me a favor? Keep the watch with you,” he implored. “I… They say I won’t really be aware but I think I’ll feel better knowing that I’m with you.”  
  
“I’ll keep you safe,” she promised and kissed his chest.   
  
He waited outside her closet as she pulled on a t-shirt and denim capris. When she emerged he had a pair of socks and her trainers ready and waiting. She smiled at him and he sat beside her as she slipped both on. He brushed a bit of hair away from her neck so he could nuzzle it and press a soft kiss just below her ear.  
  
They sat together for a few more minutes just holding each other. He kissed her one final time, slow and tender and heartbreaking and nowhere near enough.   
  
They walked hand in hand back to the infirmary to finish cleaning and healing her wounds. They were surprised to see Martha there as well, dressed in street clothes once more.  
  
She looked up when they entered. “What happened?” she asked.   
  
“Sorry if I worried you,” Rose apologized. “I just…” she swallowed.   
  
Martha smiled gently. Once again was struck by the kindness of their friend and her patience. Everything she’d done for them, everything she’d done to help them, and all the times she’d saved them. And now Rose was going to have to ask her for something else, something that might be painful to her, but would undoubtedly be agonizing to Rose. She wasn’t strong enough to do it but maybe Martha was.   
  
Of course she was. Martha could save the world on her own if she had to.  
  
Martha motioned for Rose to hop up on the table. She started cleaning Rose’s wounds while the Doctor explained what they were going to do. She didn’t speak except to ask him to clarify things while silently noting the misery written across every inch of Rose’s face. When he was done he asked them to finish up in here and meet him in the console room. As soon as she was sure he was out of earshot, Martha set down the salve and squeezed Rose’s hands.  
  
“Hey.”  
  
Rose looked up. “I don’t want to do this.”  
  
“I figured as much. Why are you letting him?”  
  
“I told him to do it. It’s…we have to. You saw what happened today. Even if we shake them now they’ll find us later. We can’t let that happen again.” she released a shuddering sigh. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”  
  
She squeezed her hands again. “Well, you won’t be alone. No matter where we end up, I’ve got your back.”  
  
Rose smiled. “Good, because I need a huge, _huge_ favor. I need you to keep an eye on his human self.”   
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“Stay close to him. Make sure nothing happens to him; that he stays out of trouble.”  
  
Martha’s eyes narrowed. “And where will you be?”  
  
“Around, but–but I–I _can’t_ …” she swallowed and shuddered. “I can’t watch a stranger parading around in his body. I’ll keep the watch safe, you keep the body safe.”  
  
Martha stared at her for a long moment then picked up the dermal regenerator and turned it on. She ran it slowly up Rose’s arm, lingering over the wounded areas. Under the blue light the broken skin started to knit back together and continued when the light moved on.   
  
“We could end up anywhere in Earth’s history. We have no idea what we’re getting into and if it were anyone else I’d say no. But as long as I don’t have to be a slave or a prostitute to keep near him, then yes. I’ll babysit.”  
  
Rose smiled. “Thank you, Martha.”  
  
After they were finished and Martha took the second half of the medicine to help her body replenish the blood it’d lost quicker than normal, they walked down to the console room together. The Doctor was finishing up something on the console when they walked in.   
  
He turned to face them without his usual enthusiasm and held up a pocket watch. “This is it.”   
  
The Doctor held out the watch and they leaned in for a closer look. It was covered in intricate lines and circles that Rose recognized as Gallifreyan. “I’ll be inside here. Opening the watch will release my consciousness and I’ll return to my body no matter how far apart we are. Plus, the moment you open the watch my scent will escape and they’ll be drawn to us like H’varqs to Goot berries. So don’t open the watch until its time and if for some reason you have to, no more than a few seconds.”  
  
“Okay,” said Martha.   
  
“Rose?”  
  
She nodded.   
  
“And these–” he pulled two seemingly ordinary silver bracelets from his pocket “–are your olfactory deceivers. Wear these on your wrists, ankles, with your TARDIS keys, I don’t care, just keep these on you at all times. The moment you remove them you’re scent will uncloak and I wouldn’t be surprised if they have your scents by now.”  
  
They both slipped them onto their wrists.  
  
The Doctor flipped a switch on the console and from above they heard something sliding down. A bizarre helmet-like contraption descended from amongst the throng of wires, tubes, and doohickeys high above the console room. It looked like something straight from a mad scientist’s lab in a B movie. The mere sight of it filled the three of them with a sense of foreboding.   
  
“The Chameleon Arch.”  
  
Martha was not impressed. “That thing? That’s what all the fuss is about?”  
  
“Yep.”  
  
“That thing can rewrite your entire biology and suck out your consciousness?”  
  
“It’s just another feature of the TARDIS.” He circled the Arch the way an animal would a sleeping predator. He glanced from Martha to Rose once more before approaching it. He inserted the fob watch into a slot and locked it into place. He held onto it for a few more seconds and then sighed. “She’ll do most of the work, but my body has to kick off the process. Rose, can you run down to the infirmary? In the blue drawer, there should be a gray bottle next to a syringe. Bring it here. Martha, I need you to help me with the final sequence.”   
  
Rose sprinted out of the console room. The Doctor watched her go with a look of such intense longing that Martha knew without a shadow of a doubt that he’d lied.   
  
“You don’t need an injection,” she said.  
  
He shook his head.  
  
“Why did you send her away?”  
  
“I don’t want her to see this.” He pressed a few buttons on the console then turned to the Arch again. He took a deep breath and lifted it onto his head, shifting around until it was situated properly.   
  
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” he told her.   
  
“Rewriting your entire biology–it’s going to hurt, isn’t it?”  
  
“Oh, yes. Worse than regeneration, they say. I don’t know how long this will take and I don’t know how long it’ll take her to get back but don’t let her do anything until it’s over. Don’t let her touch me, don’t let her stop the process, anything.”   
  
She nodded.   
  
He smiled. “I’ll see you when I wake up. Thank you, Martha Jones.”  
  
The Doctor pressed a button on the side of the Arch and closed his eyes.  
  
If she lived for a thousand years, Rose would never forget the moment the sound of the Doctor’s screams reached her ears.   
  
She’d just come to the realization that there was no gray bottle in the blue drawer and was about to ask the TARDIS to bring it out for her when she heard him. Then she was racing from the room, her feet pounding against the grating in her flight. His gut-wrenching cries tore at her body like shards of glass. She skidded around corners blindly and realized after two minutes of running that she’d taken a wrong turn but trusted the TARDIS to lead her back to the console room. When she reached a staircase, however, she realized the ship was doing the exact opposite.  
  
“NO!” she screamed, beating her fists against the nearest wall. “DON’T DO THIS TO ME!”  
  
The TARDIS hummed sorrowfully in her mind.  
  
Rose kicked the wall and ran back the way she came, screaming the Doctor’s name. Martha must’ve heard her because when Rose ran into the console room she was already ready for her. Standing firmly between the door and the Doctor, she was able to throw her arms out and catch Rose, using her own momentum to swing her around. Rose fought against her, of course, swiping and jerking around and shrieking and struggling to reach her Doctor.   
  
“Get off me!” she screamed. “DOCTOR!”   
  
“Stop it, Rose!” Martha shouted near her ear. “You can’t touch him! He told me not to let you!”  
  
Oh, that bastard. He’d lied to her just to get her out of the console room. He’d _lied_. She hadn’t got to tell him goodbye, kiss him one last time, or remind him that she loved him.   
  
Sobbing, Rose continued to struggle for a few more moments, growing weaker and weaker each time until she sagged limply. Martha released her and Rose skittered back until she hit the railing, sliding down to the floor. She pulled her knees to her chest.  
  
The Doctor kept screaming and, oh, God, it was worse than he was possessed by Torajji.   
  
Tears trickled down her cheeks in a steady stream. Martha stood next to her, equally horrified. She stared helplessly at the man she loved as he shrieked in agony until she couldn’t bear it anymore and squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her hands over her ears. It might’ve gone on for hours or only a few minutes. It was impossible to tell. All that she knew was that he was still screaming.   
  
And then he wasn’t.   
  
Rose opened her eyes carefully. The Arch was still humming and the man’s hands were still holding onto it, but other than that he’d gone completely limp. She lowered her hands from her ears and dared to hope that it was over. The Arch gave one last loud buzz and then tapered off. For a moment everything was silent, even the ever-present hum was almost inaudible.   
  
Then the man in the Arch moaned softly, his hands losing their grip, and he dropped to the floor. The moment she heard the heavy thump Rose snapped into action, pushing herself up and racing over to his side. Martha helped her roll him over onto his back and then Rose sat down and pulled his head into her lap. She caressed his temples and ran her fingers through his hair. She ducked her head and kissed his forehead.  
  
The tears renewed as she realized he looked the same. From his hair to the freckles on his face, this man was exactly the Doctor, but that’s where the similarities ended. He was hot, much too hot to be a Time Lord, more like a human with a fever. Placing her hand on the left side of his chest, she felt the steady _tha-thump_ of his left heart, but when she moved to the right side she felt absolutely nothing. His right heart had well and truly gone.  
  
When she felt the TARDIS landing, she gripped him tight so he wouldn’t be jolted too much, releasing him when they touched down. She couldn’t bring herself to move away. This man hadn’t done anything wrong and the thought of leaving him while he was in such a vulnerable state was appalling.  
  
She heard a soft rattle followed by a click. A second later Martha was kneeling beside her and she held in her hand the fob watch. Rose accepted it with a grateful smile and gripped it tightly in her right hand.   
  
It might’ve just been wishful thinking, but she could’ve sworn she heard a whisper from the watch. _Rose…_  
  
The TARDIS hummed warningly in her mind and she figured that meant he was going to awaken very soon. She brushed her fingers across his forehead once more, kissed his lips, and then lifted his head from her lap, scooting away, and gently set it down on the grating.   
  
Martha helped her to her feet and the two of them stood together, waiting. Thirty seconds of silence passed, and then the man on the floor inhaled deeply. His eyes opened and he got to his feet almost mechanically. He didn’t stop to look at his surroundings or stretch his body, he simply walked straight for the door, bending down to pick up a bag by the ramp they hadn’t noticed before, and then the man stepped out into the world. 


	36. Elliot

  
Sometimes Elliot looked back and wondered how he’d managed to keep up hope for as long as he did. Maybe it was the motivation he received from church or maybe his parents insisting that the treatments would work this time. He’d been battling cancer all his life but he had never occurred to him that there might never be an end to it. Yet no matter how long he was healthy, sooner or later he’d be sick again and he’d be right back in the hospital.   
  
He was a boy. He wanted to do boy things, like riding his bike and going to school and getting in trouble for something silly. He was also one hundred percent a person. Like the grownups just smaller. But they’d forgotten. Or maybe they’d never really thought it to begin with. After all, they’d never asked him what he thought about his cancer and the treatments and spending most of his life in the hospital.  
  
The cancer came back again just before he turned eight. On his birthday they told him he was on the waiting list for some special cancer center in California. He’d looked on a map. California was a bazillion miles away. He wouldn’t be able to ride his bike up to Speedway for an Icee, his friends wouldn’t be able to visit him, and he wouldn’t know anyone there. Plus California was where the movie people lived. He didn’t want Magneto to find him.   
  
“I don’t want to go there.”  
  
“They can help you get better,” his mom said.   
  
“We’ll be with you the whole time,” his father promised.   
  
He continued to protest. He didn’t want to go. What didn’t they get? It was so far away and…and why could those doctors help when these doctors couldn’t? It was his life. He was the one who would get kicked out of his own body by the little cancer monster. Why couldn’t he decide for himself?  
  
In the end the stopped trying to convince him this was a good thing, why they couldn’t back out, something about money, and barked: “We’re going and that’s that.”   
  
In many ways that was one of the final straws.  
  
They went to California and he underwent treatment. Three months later the cancer was in remission. They went home. A year and a half later, just after his tenth birthday, it came back. That was when he realized that the little cancer monster would never let him go. It wanted him. Was there any point in trying anymore? He’d been sick his whole life and no matter what the doctors did the cancer always came back. Like a little monster eating him inside and growing bigger and bigger until one day it would get too big and shove him out. Then he’d go to heaven and he could ask God why he’d been born this way.   
  
When his parents went through the familiar process of getting him admitted as an inpatient, he told them that he didn’t want to have chemo again. _They’re going to try something new this time. Don’t worry about your hair, sweetheart, it’ll grow back when you’re better._  
  
But even if he got better he wouldn’t stay that way! It was just going to keep coming back. Couldn’t they see there was no point?   
  
Elliot tried running away. The police found him and brought him home the next day but his parents still weren’t ready to listen. It was all about them. _We don’t want you to die. We love you. We can’t lose you. Be brave, please._  
  
What was the point of speaking if no one would listen?  
  
So he just…stopped.   
  
He wasn’t sure what hurt more: that they didn’t realize at first or that they tried to persuade him to talk instead of asking him why he’d stopped. Oh but they asked the doctors why. They asked the counselors why. The counselors asked him why and only because it was their job to. He didn’t answer.  
  
He had to live in the hospital again. All of his friends from last time were long gone. He thought about writing down his question so he could ask one of the doctors or nurses…but then he decided he didn’t want to know. He pretended they were all home with their families, happy and healthy and doing normal boy and girl things.   
  
These new kids didn’t know how to be friends with quiet Elliot. Most of them didn’t even pay attention to him except for Devin. But Devin paid attention to everyone and not in the nice way. Elliot wasn’t sure why Devin was in the hospital but he didn’t think it was cancer since he still had hair. He was also the oldest boy in there and he liked to brag about how he’d be moving up to the big kids ward soon. In his mind that made him better than the rest. Elliot wouldn’t be sorry to see him go.  
  
Without the company of friends to keep him occupied, Elliot spent a lot of his free time drawing. He’s the best artist of them all. Sometimes he draws people, sometimes animals, real and fantasy. The doctors and nurses tell him he’ll be an amazing artist when he grows up (and he knows they’re thinking ‘if he grows up’) and that he has real talent. So he doesn’t try to play with the other kids or make friends or read books because they won’t make any difference once he’s dead. He figures the pictures will last longer than he will.  
  
At least once a day Devin would march over to wherever Elliot was drawing and try to get him to talk. Elliot took to drawing something he didn’t care for that he could flip to when he saw him coming in preparation for the inevitable moment when Devin would snatch it away and rip it to goad him into talking.   
  
One time one of the others, a tiny girl that kinda looked like she was from China and had a gap between her front teeth approached him. She sat beside him for a while and watched him draw. She said her name was Macy before shyly asking him if he could draw her a unicorn with dark eyes and a blonde mane. He smiled and was just about to nod when Devin stuck his big nose in.   
  
“You retard, he can’t hear you. Oh, wait, you’re not a retard, you’re a blonde. My bad. I couldn’t tell until I saw your eyebrows. Or what’s left of them anyway.”  
  
Macy’s hands flew to her head and for a second Elliot saw an image in his mind of Macy not too long ago with long and pretty blonde hair instead of a pink and orange bandanna. Then it was gone and tears were filling her eyes. She ran away from them.   
  
Elliot glared at Devin. He’d never ever felt that angry before and he wanted to take his colored pencils and shove them into every hole in Devin’s head.   
  
Devin sneered at him.  
  
That night he waited until the nurses were gone then he snuck over to Macy’s bed, tapped her awake, and handed her a picture of a white unicorn with dark eyes and a long yellow mane spilling out from underneath a pink and orange bandanna. She beamed at him and started to thank him but he pressed a finger to his lips. She closed her mouth obediently but she didn’t stop grinning and he knew she understood.   
  
Macy didn’t make a big deal out of the picture and except on the times she sat by him as he drew, Devin didn’t bother her any more than he normally did. No one else was as brave as her, though, so Elliot was alone most of the time. He pretended he didn’t mind. Devin still preferred to taunt him more than any of the others, though.  
  
The day he had enough was the day he really met the new doctor in their ward.   
  
The first day he came he introduced himself as Dr. John Smith and all the other children automatically liked him, even Devin. What wasn’t to like? Tall, lots of hair on his head, and a nice face, the kind of man you saw in movies. He was funny and he didn’t talk down to them. They all loved his accent.   
  
But Elliot felt unsure. He _seemed_ like a normal children’s doctor but there was something wrong.  
  
Elliot had this thing he could do. He could tell things about people. Sometimes he saw glimpses of their past, the way he saw Macy’s hair. Sometimes he could tell what they were thinking. There was no pattern, no way to control it. It just happened. His friend Curtis called it his ‘mojo.’  
  
When he saw glimpses of Dr. Smith it wasn’t like the other times. There were no clear pictures, no knowledge that came from nowhere. It was a jumble of blurry, half-formed images. Like his mojo couldn’t understand what it was picking up on. It made him nervous and it happened more often with Dr. Smith than anyone else so he made an effort to not be near him longer than he had to.  
  
One afternoon in the playroom about two weeks after Dr. Smith came, Elliot had the urge to draw the night sky. He pulled out the drawing pad with the colorful pages and selected a black one. He got out his pack of special light colored pencils and let his hands go free. Two moons, loads of stars, and other different colored dots that were actually planets in the distance and Elliot knew he wasn’t drawing Earth’s sky but he didn’t care. It was real. He knew it. He could see it in his mind.   
  
Someone around him had seen this sky before somewhere. Somehow.  
  
Then Devin came over to play. Elliot didn’t notice him coming until there wasn’t time left to flip to a drawing he didn’t mind Devin taking. There was nothing he could do as Devin sat down in the chair next to him except keep drawing and pray. But God hadn’t listened to all the prayers to make him better. Why should God care about this?  
  
“What’s this supposed to be?” Devin asked. “That ain’t right. We only got one moon, you retard. Don’t you know anything?”   
  
Elliot ignored him and kept working on the largest moon. Dark paper was tricky ‘cause you had to color highlights instead of shadows.  
  
“Hey! I’m talkin’ to you, mutey. I know you’re not really deaf. I know you can hear me. Answer me!”   
  
_Sticks and stones may break my bones…_  
  
“I said answer me, stupid head!”   
  
_But words can never hurt me._  
  
Devin snatched the sketchpad from under his hands. Elliot reached for it automatically. _No, no, no._  
  
“I ain’t givin’ it back until you answer me.” Devin said, holding it out of reach. Elliot pushed his chair back and leaned across the table but Devin snatched it away from his seeking fingers. “You heard me, mutey. Talk or I ain’t givin’ it.”   
  
Would Devin give him back the drawing even if he talked? Was the drawing worth it? Would Devin leave him alone if he talked? Could he even talk anymore? It’d been weeks. What if his voice had gone away forever? Was it even worth trying?   
  
He took too long to think about it.   
  
“Guess you don’t want it.” Devin said and turned it around. He twisted his lips as he thought about it. “I don’t either. It’s stupid.”  
  
He gripped the edge of the paper and tugged. Instead of coming neatly out of the pad, it tore at the top and diagonally down through the middle and something inside Elliot snapped.   
  
With a strength he didn’t know he had, he shoved the table right into Devin’s stomach. The other boy let out a startled ‘oomph!’ and he let go of the paper, but that wasn’t good enough. He’d _ripped_ it. He’d destroyed it. He was always doing that. Every day. Even if Elliot didn’t care about those other drawings they were still getting torn.  
  
Elliot launched himself at Devin and knocked him right out of the chair. Devin was too started to defend himself at first and Elliot didn’t give him a chance after. He was aware of the other children screaming, some of them egging him on, _cheering_ , and adults shouting but it was nothing but noise. Devin was crying but he didn’t stop. He just hitting him in the face over and over with his fists and raking his nails across his skin.   
  
Some distant part of his mind warned him that this would only get him in trouble but Elliot didn’t care. It wasn’t fair! He hadn’t wanted leukemia, he hadn’t wanted his parents to ignore him, he didn’t want to feel alone, and he hadn’t wanted to lose his friends or have to share secret smiles with those he still had. Some of it was Devin’s fault, most of it wasn’t. But he was there now and it easier to blame him for all of it.   
  
A pair of hands grabbed him under his arms and lifted him into the air like he weighed nothing. He screamed wordlessly, voice rough and hoarse from disuse, and kicked and thrashed at the person holding him. They adjusted their grip, holding him with their arms wrapped around his midsection.   
  
“That’s enough!”   
  
Elliot saw a blurred face with brown hair in his mind and realized Dr. Smith was holding him off the floor. Tears rolled down Elliot’s cheeks and he continued to kick and thrash as Dr. Smith carried him out of the playroom. He saw other adults bending down to fuss over Devin and the other kids staring at him in awe. And his sketchpad and pencils left forgotten on the table.   
  
He may have beaten Devin, but Devin had still won. Elliot hadn’t said words but he’d still let him hear his voice.   
  
Dr. Smith set him down on his bed and knelt in front him. Elliot continued to cry while Dr. Smith looked him up and down critically. He didn’t seem too angry and that made no kind of sense. But, then, Dr. Smith didn’t really make much sense himself.  
  
“We’ve never had a chance to talk before now. You’re always drawing. Elliot Hunter, right?” he asked.  
  
Elliot reached up to wipe his eyes. Dr. Smith waited and Elliot realized he wasn’t going to let him get away without answering. Except, he wasn’t asking him to talk. He wasn’t yelling or blaming him or threatening to rip things up. He just wanted a response.   
  
So Elliot nodded.   
  
“You know, Elliot…the other children have told me about Devin Jacobs. They say he’s a bully. They say he tries to goad you into talking.”  
  
Elliot nodded, not meeting his eyes.  
  
“Macy Clearwater says he rips up your drawings sometimes. You drew her a unicorn and she hides it from Devin.”  
  
He nodded and wiped his nose.  
  
Dr. Smith sighed heavily. “Elliot, I understand you were angry with him, but violence is not the answer. You might’ve heard the whole spiel before, and I know it’s overdone, but it’s true. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Like–oh, I know–ever seen the original Star Wars movie?”  
  
Elliot nodded. _Duh._  
  
“Remember when the _Millennium Falcon_ is being sucked into the Death Star, Han is trying to fight it. Obi-Wan Kenobi told him–hang on, let me see if I can do this.” He cleared his throat and attempted an American accent as he said, “‘There are alternatives to fighting.’”  
  
Elliot sniffed but he couldn’t help the grin tugging at his lips. He really couldn’t speak American.   
  
“Not exactly the same circumstances but the point still stands. Violence might seem like the easiest way to deal with your problems, but it also is the easiest way to add to your problems. Alright?”  
  
He nodded once more and groaned internally at the typical adult response.   
  
“Good lad.” Dr. Smith patted his knee again and stood up. “Unfortunately, I’m going to have to call your parents about this. You’re to stay on this bed until I say otherwise. I’m not cross with you, Elliot,” he added quietly. “Bullies have a way of bringing out the worst in us.”  
  
There was old pain in his voice and it prompted Elliot to look up and meet his gaze.   
  
_Three boys were in an alleyway. The younger version of Dr. Smith and another boy shorter than he with black hair were backed up against the wall while the third boy taunted them ruthlessly. He seemed to be targeting the smaller one…_  
  
 _…and they were somewhere new now and the bully was throwing small stones at the little boy and John snapped and he threw himself at the bully and started beating him down…_   
  
Elliot inhaled sharply. That hadn’t been like the others. It was warped, yes, like it wasn’t exactly right, but something about it rang true. His mojo said something was wrong with Dr. Smith but he could be trusted.   
  
Maybe he would listen.   
  
His parents certainly wouldn’t.   
  
When they arrived they chewed him out and told him that violence was wrong and he hadn’t handled it well and something about money and insurance and punishments and Elliot really didn’t care. It didn’t matter that Devin had started it. He was the one in trouble because he’d defended himself. They ended it with how very disappointed he was and that he had to apologize to Devin.  
  
He reached for his sketchpad and pencils but his father had snatched them away. “No. You will apologize out loud so he can hear you.”  
  
Elliot looked at the floor and no amount of orders or bribes could get him to look back up. They were threatening to move him to another ward and away from all his friends ( _Macy!_ he thought in despair) when Dr. Smith stepped in.  
  
“If I may, Mr. and Mrs. Hunter,” he began. “I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced, my name is Dr. John Smith. I’ve spoken to the children before and a lot of them say that Devin has been causing a lot of problems. Sorry Mrs. Jacobs,” he added to the woman sitting with Devin. She raised her eyebrows. “But they also say he tries to goad Elliot into talking on a daily basis. That he rips up his drawings when he doesn’t.”  
  
“Devin!” Mrs. Jacobs exclaimed. “Have you really?”  
  
“No!” Devin lied.   
  
Dr. Smith folded his arms. “One of my med students asked the children if they saw what happened. Several of the said they saw you rip up the drawing he’d been working on for hours. May I?” he held his hand out for the sketchpad. Elliot’s father handed it over and Dr. Smith flipped through it until he located the torn black paper that had been stuffed in carelessly. “Well, here we are, then.”   
  
Devin smashed his lips together furiously and now it was his turn to look away.   
  
“Today’s incident seems to be the accumulation of several weeks worth of frustrations. Now, I’m not condoning Elliot’s actions, but perhaps you shouldn’t be so harsh on him. And perhaps forcing him to talk isn’t the best course of action.”  
  
“Well then what do you suggest?” Mrs. Hunter asked.   
  
Dr. Smith looked between the two boys. “Devin, are you sorry for being mean to Elliot and tearing up his drawings?”  
  
Devin glared up at him.  
  
“Devin?”  
  
“Yes,” he bit out.  
  
“Uh huh. Now say it like you mean it.”  
  
Devin took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m sorry.”   
  
“And do you promise to stop being mean and tearing up his drawings?”  
  
“…Yes.”   
  
“Good. Elliot, are you sorry for hitting him?”  
  
 _No! I’ll never be sorry! He deserved it!_ Elliot nodded.  
  
“And do you promise never to do it again?”  
  
He nodded.   
  
Dr. Smith smiled. “There we are, then. There’s nothing more we can do. There’s no point in putting Elliot in a separate ward. His friends are here and Devin will soon be moved to an adolescent ward, anyway. If nobody has a problem with this, I think we’re done here.”  
  
Elliot stared at him and only just managed to not gawk.   
  
The next day Dr. Smith returned his sketchpad and pencils. Elliot was stunned. He’d assumed he was going to get them back and he’d been preparing to steal notebook paper and pens. Dr. Smith smiled at him, winked once, and then left. He sat there, completely stunned, for about a minute then flipped through the pages until he came to the one Devin had ripped.  
  
It was fixed.   
  
No, not fixed, he could still see the rip. He checked the back and saw three strips of tape placed neatly along the tear. No bends or crinkles.   
  
Something on the brown page below it caught his eye.  


_Elliot,_

_Sorry for using one of your pages up. I just thought you should know that you are a brilliant artist. It takes a special kind of talent to draw something like that without any reference at all. You should finish it._

_And don’t worry I didn’t browse._

  
  
It was from Dr. Smith, it had to be. It looked like doctor handwriting–all messy and wobbly like a first grader’s.   
  
Elliot smiled, pulled the light blue pencil out of the box and carefully resumed where he’d left off.   
  
Hours later he was still working on it in the playroom. Macy, emboldened by yesterday’s events, came over and plopped down in the seat next to him. Her eyes flitted across the paper, taking in all the details, including the tear.   
  
“This is the one Devin ripped,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “You’re really good, you know, and Devin isn’t. He’s jealous you can draw and he can’t. That’s what I think.”  
  
 _Maybe._ But if that’s the reason, then why did he want to make Elliot talk?   
  
“But it’s good you finally got mad at him. Maybe he’ll leave you alone now.”   
  
_Maybe._  
  
“Do you…do you mind if I sit and watch you draw?” she asked. “I won’t touch your pencils or nothing. I’ll even stop talking if you want me to.”  
  
 _Yeah right._ He grinned down at the paper and nodded.   
  
She scooted her chair closer, leaning her arms on the table and resting her chin in her hands. They sat in companionable silence for a long time while he put the finishing touches on his picture. Macy didn’t try to tell him the sky was wrong or there was no way there could be two moons in the sky. She didn’t compliment him or tell him he was doing good. She was just silent and as much as he appreciated her consideration, he thought it was strange to not hear her chatter.  
  
So when he was done, he set down the white pencil and picked up a regular one, flipped to the next unused sheet and wrote. _You don’t have to be quiet._  
  
Macy raised her eyebrows and a smile spread across her face. And it was a good smile; the kind in movies you saw after the day was saved. Because except for an occasional head movement or gesture, this was the first time he’d actually communicated with her since he gave her the unicorn and told her to keep quiet. It made her seem older than he’d thought she was.   
  
He pointed to himself then held up ten fingers.   
  
She stared at him for a moment. “You’re ten?” He nodded. “I thought you were like twelve or something.”  
  
He shook his head and grinned. She giggled. “You look funny when you do that. Oh, no! I meant that in a good way. I’ve never seen you smile like that.”  
  
No, she hadn’t. He’d been afraid to do anything to attract Devin’s notice. He didn’t really believe Devin would leave him alone from here on out but maybe things wouldn’t be as bad. Maybe he could have a real friend again.  
  
“I’m nine.”  
  
He nodded and for lack of anything better to respond with, he gave her a thumbs up.   
  
Macy tilted her head to the side and studied him inquisitively. “How come you don’t talk, Elliot?”  
  
He stared at her.  
  
“You’re not sick in your throat and I heard you scream yesterday so I know you can talk, you just choose not to. So how come?”  
  
Elliot looked down at the paper, deciding if he should ignore her question or answer it and how to explain if he did. He gripped the pencil tightly.   
  
_Because no one ever listens when I do._ he wrote.   
  
“I’d listen.” Macy said. In his mind he saw him and Macy sitting at the table from behind, leaning over his sketchpad. He blinked in surprise and looked behind them. Dr. Lewis, a blonde woman who always smiled at them no matter what kind of day she was having, was standing in the doorway looking around the room. She noticed him looking and waved.   
  
He looked back at the sketchpad with the image still fresh in his mind, flipped to a white page, and started to draw it. Macy leaned closer to watch. It didn’t take her long to realize what he was drawing.  
  
“That’s us.”  
  
He continued working for the remainder of their time in the playroom and Macy stayed with him. He was putting on the finishing touches when the nurses told them it was time for dinner. The image he’d drawn was an almost exact replica of the scene in his head, now faded, except for the other children in the background. Macy was amazed.  
  
Every day for the following week Macy sat with him during playtime. Sometimes she was content to just watch him; sometimes she brought toys to play with or a book to read. He didn’t mind. He knew it had to be hard for her to be his friend when he barely responded to anything she said. Her company was enough.  
  
Dr. Smith came around a few times and paused to watch him work. He never stayed long and he usually didn’t speak other than to say hello.   
  
Devin usually glared at them from across the playroom but he only ever came over once. Macy quickly put a stop to that, folding her arms and shooting daggers at him from her eyes. “You got a problem, buttwipe?” she asked loudly. “‘Cause you come any closer and you’re definitely gonna.”  
  
Elliot didn’t look up to see Devin’s response but he didn’t bother them so he figured that was good enough. He hadn’t realized the courage his fight with Devin had given her.   
  
One time she got the idea to make things for him to draw. She’d gather toys and objects from around the room and set up a scene on the table, which he then proceeded to draw. Other times he’d wait until she was preoccupied with her own entertainment and then he’d sketch her. These would always make her grin and blush and pull her bandanna down over her face.  
  
It was the best week he’d had in a long time.   
  
At the end of it, Macy was late to the playroom. She’d had an appointment during lunchtime so he wasn’t too surprised. When she finally arrived he was prepared to show her the picture he’d just finished. She sat down next to him as she usually did and he pulled himself out of the zone so he could focus on her when she started talking. He waited, and waited, and waited. After a few minutes he looked up to make sure she hadn’t died or something and caught her staring at him. There were tears in her eyes.  
  
His mind immediately jumped to the worst possible conclusion. _Oh no, no, no. It’s not working, is it? The chemo isn’t working and you’re getting worse and–_  
  
“Calm down,” she ordered.   
  
He realized he was breathing quickly and he swallowed. Taking a deep breath, he exhaled slowly and tried to calm his racing heart.  
  
Macy sniffed and looked down at the paper. “So, what are you drawing?” she asked, trying and failing to sound cheery. “Is that supposed to be a dog or a fox? I’ve always wanted a pet fox, they look so fluffy and their tails are so bushy…”  
  
Elliot stared at her for a moment and then flipped the page and started to write. He almost never did this, preferring to use facial expressions and gestures to communicate Macy understood, even seemed to enjoy the charades. But this was serious.  
  
 _Are you going to die?_  
  
Her eyes widened and she laughed. He gawked at her for a good thirty seconds before she finally calmed down, shaking her head. “No. I’m going to live. I’m going home today.”  
  
Elliot stared at her, completely full of emotions–shock, fear, sadness, joy, hope, and the beginnings of loneliness–and he couldn’t settle for just one. If she was going home then that meant her treatments were over and her cancer was going away or even gone. And that was good. Great. Awesome. Maybe she’d be lucky and it wouldn’t ever come back. He hoped so. The cancer monster shouldn’t have her. God shouldn’t be that unkind. Her blonde hair would grow back and she’d get rid of her bandannas (or maybe she’d still wear them as a reminder) and she’d go to school and do normal girl things and grow up and get married and get a job and have babies and…and…  
  
But she’d be leaving him behind.  
  
“I knew I might be leaving soon. I didn’t want to tell you earlier,” she went on. “I was afraid you wouldn’t want to be my friend ‘cause I was leaving.”  
  
His mouth moved but even now he couldn’t bring himself to break his silence. Instead he looked back down at his sketchpad. It was easier to not respond and simply look away.   
  
“But the…the doctor said my cancer is nearly gone. I beat it, Elliot. I beat it.” There was such pride in her voice that he had to look up at her and smile. There were tears in his eyes but he didn’t care. He leaned over and hugged her tightly. She hugged him back.   
  
Macy sniffled “I’ll come visit you,” she promised. “And when you’re better you can come over to my house and we can play on the swings if you want and I’ll get chalk and we can draw on the driveway.”   
  
He smiled. That was good. Something he could look forward to after he was out and to occupy his time until he was back in. He could introduce her to his other friends and Macy would help them understand.   
  
He drew back and flipped the pages in his sketchbook until he reached the one he’d drawn of the two of them at the table days before. He carefully tore it out and scrawled their names on the bottom so she’d never forget him even after the cancer monster finally got him. She accepted it with like it was something precious then leaned forward and kissed his cheek.   
  
“Macy!” a woman called from the doorway. She looked a lot like Macy, except her skin was darker and she looked like she was from China.   
  
_She’s going to leave me,_ he thought in a sudden panic.   
  
Macy glanced at her then back to Elliot. “Mom wants us to go eat lunch together. I’ll see you in a little bit, okay?”  
  
He nodded and forced himself to smile. She hugged him one last time then she hopped out of her chair and ran over to her mother. He watched them leave and stared at the door for a long time after. When he finally turned back to his sketchpad he realized there were tearstains on the paper.  
  
He felt like he might be sick. He closed his sketchpad, gathered up his pencils, and returned to the ward without telling anyone. It was almost worse going back to the room. There was a blonde man that seemed familiar, though he was sure he’d never seen him before, by Macy’s bed, putting her things into a box. Elliot stared at him.   
  
The man became aware that he was being watched and turned around. He raised his eyebrows at Elliot’s piercing look. “Hello there, son,” he greeted.  
  
Elliot blinked.   
  
“I’m just packing my daughter’s things.”  
  
Macy’s father, he realized. No wonder her looked familiar. And that shade of blonde was identical to Macy’s whenever his mojo showed him what she looked like before. So that was why Macy looked like she did. Not quite Chinese, not quite white; she was mixed.   
  
Macy’s father was packing her stuff. She really was leaving.  
  
Elliot’s lip trembled. He didn’t want to watch but he didn’t feel like going back to the playroom. If he went anywhere else on the floor he’d be found and made to return to the playroom. If he went to another floor then he could get in big trouble. Plus there’d been that one woman and her daughter who hadn’t understood leukemia and thought it was contagious. They’d treated him like he had that plague he learned about in school. He wasn’t eager to repeat the experience.   
  
Macy’s father was beginning to seem uncomfortable under his stare. “Are…you okay? Do you need me to call a nurse?”   
  
He shook his head and walked over to his bed. He put his paper and pencils in their place then climbed into bed, pulling the covers over his head. He spent the next ten minutes listening to Macy’s father pack her stuff away.   
  
Elliot didn’t go to dinner. He wasn’t hungry.  
  
Macy came back after that with the other children, several of which where talking to her. He pushed the covers down, sat up, and waited to be noticed. It didn’t take long. She saw him out of the corner of her eye, finished her conversation, and made her way over to him. She plopped onto his bed unceremoniously and smiled weakly at him.   
  
“You kinda scared my dad earlier. But it’s all right; I told him you were nice.”  
  
Elliot almost smiled.   
  
“I’m leaving in a few minutes. Mom and Dad are doing the paperwork. …But I’ll see you real soon. Promise.”  
  
He nodded, reaching for his paper and a pencil.   
  
_I’ll miss you,_ he wrote.   
  
“I’ll miss you, too.” she said and hugged him tight.  
  
From the other side of the room, three voices broke out in song. “Macy and Elliot sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”  
  
Elliot recoiled away from her, cheeks flaming, and Macy twisted around to glare at them.   
  
The rest of the room joined in. “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Macy with the baby carriage!”  
  
“Shuddup!” she hollered while they all cackled. Shaking her head disdainfully, she turned away and hugged Elliot again. “…Unless, y’know, you wanna get married,” she whispered. “But I think you’ll have to ask my dad first.”  
  
Elliot’s shoulders shook with silent laughter.   
  
The following morning when he returned from getting his chemo, Macy’s bed had been stripped and he could smell bleach in the air. They’d gone and removed all proof she’d ever been there in the first place and soon a new kid would come and sleep in her bed.   
  
He had to remind himself that it was a good thing she was gone.   
  
Around lunchtime Dr. Smith came in and found him lying in bed. They stared at each other in silence for a few moments and then he left without a word. The other children came back a while after. None of them said anything to him. None of them ever did without Macy around.   
  
At dinner time Miss James, one of the student Doctors, a black woman with an accent like Dr. Smith’s, came to get him. “Time for dinner, Elliot,” she said.   
  
She’d been one of Macy’s doctors. He swallowed and didn’t look her in the eye for the rest of the time she was there. She tried to get him to get up to eat but he wasn’t hungry. Eventually she left.   
  
The next day he didn’t feel like going to the playroom so he sat alone on his bed in the empty ward and doodled aimlessly on a black piece of paper with a black pencil. His counselor would have fun trying to figure out what this means. She was always browsing his sketchpads as if it held the secrets to his mind, not caring that he didn’t want her to.  
  
He heard someone come in but he didn’t bother to look. If they wanted his attention they’d get it. But no one ever came to talk to him at this time of day. So he was quite surprised when he felt someone sit down on his bed.   
  
Dr. Smith, his mojo warned.  
  
“You’re friend Macy went home a few days ago. I talked to Dr. Lewis about her. She said Macy’s cancer was nearly entirely gone.”  
  
 _I know._  
  
“And Miss James says you haven’t been eating. That’s not good, Elliot.” Dr. Smith sighed heavily. “I understand you miss her, but this is not the way to handle your grief. Macy wouldn’t want you to go hungry.”  
  
 _I guess._  
  
“I noticed you’ve been drawing a lot of strange things lately: creatures from other worlds, strange skies, and stars. I, uh, well–I have something I’d like to share with you, if you don’t mind. I think you might like it.”  
  
Elliot looked up curiously. This was new. Dr. Smith held an ordinary deep blue composition notebook in his hands. The corner of his mouth twitched. “Promise you won’t think I’m barking?”  
  
Elliot blinked.  
  
He tried again. “Promise you won’t think I’m insane?”  
  
 _Oh._ Elliot nodded and traced an X on his chest.   
  
Dr. Smith laughed. “Good enough. I have these dreams where I’m an alien and I travel through time and space. They’ve been happening frequently I’ve started to write them down here to keep track. I was thinking about moving them to a proper journal. I find it frustrating trying to draw with all these lines in the background. Would you like to hear some?”  
  
Elliot nodded.  
  
“Alright.” He picked up a brown bag from the floor and handed it to Elliot. “I’ll read to you if you eat what I’ve brought.”   
  
Elliot looked in the bag. A sandwich, an apple, milk, and a chocolate chip cookie. His stomach rumbled loudly and Dr. Smith chuckled. Elliot pulled out the sandwich and unwrapped it. PB &J. Yum. Lunch for a story, seemed like a fair trade. He took a bite of it, glancing up at Dr. Smith.   
  
He nodded, opening the journal to page one, and began to read. “My name is the Doctor…”


	37. In Hiding

  
She still couldn’t get over his name.   
  
She didn’t understand why the TARDIS, who had invented him an entire life story and had the capabilities to make that story entirely credible, couldn’t come up with a proper name. John Smith was so inconspicuous that it actually _was_ conspicuous. Or at least it was when they were lying. But John Smith was a credible, trusted, and frankly magnificent doctor. Why would anyone question him?  
  
His occupation had also been something of a shock. He was a pediatrician, of all things. She thought it might’ve been the TARDIS’s way of having a laugh. The Doctor was good with children so his human counterpart was a children’s doctor.   
  
All things considering, she thought the TARDIS had chosen a pretty good place for them to wait the three months out. America in the year 2003: modern enough for her and Martha to be comfortable and far enough for them to be safe from Torchwood. They were completely active in this time period but they were on the other side of the Atlantic. Thinking back on it, she was almost positive their jurisdiction didn’t extend to America. So unless the Men in Black were real, there were no other alien-related agencies in America, unless you counted UNIT (which she didn’t) but they were allies of the Doctor and were unlikely to take advantage of his vulnerable state. She hoped.   
  
Bridgeton, Kentucky was nothing like London. It was difficult at first and she and Martha spent the first week trying to find their feet. Most of the people had strange drawls, somewhere between the standard American accent and the deep Southern accent the people had when she and the Doctor visited 1949 Georgia.   
  
Rose was jarred from her thoughts by the phone ringing and her hand snatched up the receiver before it could even finish. “Good afternoon, Riverview Hospital, how may I direct your call?” she recited.  
  
The woman on the line launched into a long rant about what was wrong with her and Rose tried to follow along as best she could before politely informing the woman that she was only a receptionist and couldn’t provide her with medical help but, if she would like to hold on a minute, she would transfer her to someone who could.   
  
Placing her hand over the microphone and whispered to Natalie, “This woman says she has a hernia and needs to make an appointment with someone.”  
  
“Dr. Pearson’s clinic, gastrology, extension 3452,” Natalie responded without looking away from her screen.   
  
“You’re a saint.”  
  
“That’s what they tell me.”  
  
Rose dialed in the extension then hung the phone up and went back to her computer.  
  
It was not her dream job, being a receptionist at a hospital main desk, but it beat working in the gift shop, cafeteria, or as a janitor. She worked reasonable hours and she always had a partner working the desk with her. Depending on their shifts, it was either Aiden or Natalie. Both were very welcoming and had been excited to have a fresh face added in the mix.   
  
On her first day she’d been scheduled to work with Natalie. She was somewhere in her late forties with a brown pixie cut and style of makeup that made her look quite severe. Rose Tyler, time traveller, intergalactic hero, the Bad Wolf, the guardian of the Doctor mind, the Stuff of Legends, was immediately intimidated. She decided on the spot to try and work her voice into an Estuary accent so the woman wouldn’t immediately label her a chav. Turns out she needn’t have worried.   
  
Natalie heard her speak, raised her eyebrows, and said, “I’m only gonna ask this once is your British accent real or are you just faking it?”  
  
Rose very nearly laughed with relief and realized the woman probably wouldn’t know Cockney from Northern. After all, she apparently hadn’t been as well educated in American accents as she thought. She should’ve realized it would’ve been the same for Americans and the variety of English accents.  
  
So when she responded she slipped right back into her natural accent and said, “No ‘s real.”   
  
Natalie’s features relaxed into a smile. “Well, then, hello Rose Taylor. It’s nice to meet you. Have you clocked in yet?”  
  
The job wasn’t perfect and she wasn’t the worlds best receptionist, but it was manageable, her coworkers were decent, and as long as she worked at this desk there was little chance of John Smith seeing her, or vice versa. All in all, she had it pretty well.   
  
Martha was working as a med student from the UK finishing her residency under the name Martha James. It was either luck or the “residual awareness” the Doctor had mentioned but Martha’s attending physician just so happened to be John Smith. Things couldn’t have gone better if they’d planned it. Not only was Martha getting more medical experience but also got to be near him almost every day for hours on end.   
  
While Rose, on the other hand, didn’t have to be. That in itself was a blessing to her fragile heart. Plus, as an added bonus, John’s shift wasn’t usually over until she’d already gone home for the day and on the rare occasions when it was, he never stopped at the desk to chat. He didn’t even know she existed and it was better that way. If his residual knowledge of Martha was enough to make him accept her and treat her as a friend, then what would it say about Rose? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.   
  
“You know,” Natalie said, startling Rose back into the present. “I’ll never understand how you move so fast. I don’t think I’ve heard the phone ring more than once in a row since you’ve started working here.”   
  
Rose smiled sheepishly. Years with the Doctor had given her amazing reflexes. Answering a telephone quickly was easy and unless she was in the middle of something, she didn’t see the point in making the person on the other line wait any longer than they had to.   
  
“Just good reflexes. Reckon I’d be good at football if I tried.”  
  
Natalie eyed her. “Petite little thing like you? They’d trample you.”  
  
“I’m not that small.” Rose sniffed. “Plenty of women are smaller than me.”  
  
“But there’s no women’s football league.”  
  
“Yes there–oh, wait. By football I meant…er, football. No hands, kick the ball into a goal, goalies.”  
  
“Soccer,” Natalie said. “Or, in Spanish, American football.”  
  
Natalie had taken it upon herself to teach Rose Spanish. She had no way of knowing that everything she said was being run through a telepathic filter inside Rose’s head and translated into English. Usually that was how it worked–the TARDIS would identify the primary language of their time and location and would translate words in the second before they were spoken so they came out in that tongue. But the Doctor had taught her how to inform the TARDIS she wanted to be heard speaking a specific language even to those who would not understand. She could’ve gotten a job in the hospital as a translator but she ran the risk of running into John or there was always the chance she’d forget to get the TARDIS’s attention and she’d go in and everyone would hear their native language. Martha had agreed it wasn’t a good idea.   
  
But she couldn’t explain any of that to Natalie so she let the older woman try to educate her in a language that only 5% of the Bridgeton population spoke.   
  
That was just how Natalie was. She had a keen memory for facts, statistics, and the most random information. She memorized things, stored them away, and shared them when it suited her. For example, in the past few weeks, Rose had inadvertently learned that Bridgeton had one hundred and fifty thousand people, four townships, two hospitals, one museum, two bike trails, ten parks, eight swimming pools, and sixteen fire stations. It didn’t annoy Rose so much as it overwhelmed her. The Doctor could talk for England but he was content with receiving noncommittal responses most of the time. Natalie made her ramblings into a conversation in which she expected the other person(s) to participate.   
  
At the same time, she was very much a mama bear. She seemed to view Rose as a young girl who was far from home and mourning her love and, therefore, needed guidance and protection. Not coddling, mind. She didn’t let Rose slack off but at the same time she was lenient if Rose zoned out as she was stroking the fob watch, since it had been _his_. She expected Rose to be on her ‘A game’ when working and she helped her stay there by doing things like telling her the extension to a gastrology clinic on the third floor.  
  
The other person she usually worked with was Aiden. He was younger than Natalie, somewhere near twenty-six if she had to guess, unmarried, pretty, with a headful of ginger hair that he probably spent fifteen minutes on in the morning. His personality wasn’t too shabby, either, very light and funny. Definitely her type and if her affections weren’t elsewhere, she’d probably be interested.   
  
He’d definitely been interested in her at the beginning. It wasn’t worth starting anything with him even if she could bring herself to. So she and Martha had come up with another part of their backstories. Rose’s boyfriend of nearly three years had passed away recently and when her friend Martha told her she was moving to the USA, she decided to come with her for a fresh start. Martha said it would give Rose a little leniency with her behavior and if Aiden were any sort of decent, it would ward him off.  
  
He’d seemed decent but she’d still been worried he wouldn’t take no for an answer and she’d have to put up with his advances for three months or risk losing her job. Thankfully, once he heard her story, he backed off, offering his shoulder if she ever needed it, platonic dates if she needed a night out, and to take over the desk if she needed a moment. She planned on taking him up on at least one of the three.   
  
He’d also realized that she knew next to nothing about living in America and started correcting her speech.   
  
• Cash point: atm.   
• Ten past eight: eight-ten.   
• Crisps: chips.   
• Chips: fries.   
• Biscuits: cookies.   
• The cinema: movies or the movie theater.   
• Chemist: drug store.   
• Petrol: gas.  
• Trousers: pants.  
  
And that was just from the first week. By the end of the first month they’d gone through changing word spellings (like colour to color) for when she had to write things down for people, where famous monuments were, and he was trying to teach her how to speak with the local accent. That last one wasn’t going anywhere fast.  
  
“You’re pronouncing things wrong. You have to say each word and draw out your vowels,” he said. “Stop biting them off.”  
  
“I don’t pronounce anythin’ wrong!” she shot back. “ _You_ lot pronounce things wrong.”  
  
“Well, around here, this is how things are said.”  
  
“And back home, this is how things are said.”  
  
“Come on, Rosie, try again. It’s not that hard.”   
  
She arched her eyebrow. “Right then, if it’s so easy, talk like me. G’on.”  
  
He ended up sounding like a Northerner with something stuck in his throat. So she’d told him if he planned on teaching her any more, first he had to work on speaking like her. She told him once she was satisfied he could walk around her old neighborhood without getting weird looks every time he opened his mouth, he could try teaching her to talk like a Kentuckian again. She figured that would spare her for a few weeks.   
  
Or drive her spare in a few weeks.  
  
The next shift they worked together, he greeted her with a hearty, “Top o’ the mornin’ to, ye!”  
  
She stopped dead with her hand halfway to the time clock then turned her head slowly. “That’s–that’s Irish,” she said after a moment.   
  
“Damn.”   
  
The afternoon shift ended at six pm. At five ‘til, the two working the evening shift arrived to take over and Rose and Natalie walked back to the staff room together. As they collected their things and clocked out, Natalie asked if she had anything planned for the evening.  
  
“Martha’s not on call tonight so we’re probably going to go to the cine–the movies,” she amended quickly.   
  
She nodded. “Sounds fun. What are you going to see?”  
  
“I think _Bruce Almighty_. I hear it’s hilarious.” She knew for a fact that it was, as she’d seen it when it was first released in Britain, but she couldn’t tell Natalie that.   
  
“I haven’t seen it yet but I’m going to. Even if the plot is bad–which I doubt–it’s starring Jim Carrey. Mmm-mmm.” She smiled wickedly and placed her card into the slot on the top of the clock.  
  
Rose’s mouth split into a disbelieving grin.   
  
“Oh, come on, you have to admit he’s good looking.”  
  
“Well…”  
  
“Oh, stop.”  
  
Rose slipped her card into the slot, waited for the clicking to finish, then withdrew it. She checked to make sure the information was accurate then returned her card to its appropriate slot. “He’s alright, yeah, but he kind of creeps me out sometimes. Just some of the faces he makes and the way his eyes and teeth works. He looks like an upright Kortar.”   
  
“A what?” Natalie asked.  
  
Rose froze, eyes widening, and was thankful Natalie couldn’t see her face. She was so careful to not let things like that slip, but Natalie had become dear to her in the last few weeks, filling a small part of the void left behind by her mother’s absence. She was still debating on telling her who she really was once this was all over, but not yet. Not like this.  
  
“It’s, uh, this monster thing from a show I used to watch, long time ago. But it was weird looking.”  
  
Natalie smiled, satisfied by her answer, and gave her a hug. “Well, enjoy the movie. I’ll see you Thursday.”  
  
Rose bid her goodbye and fled the hospital, feeling the same conflicting emotions she always did. On the one hand she was glad to be away from John Smith but on the other, she didn’t want to be far away if he needed her. But it wasn’t like she was abandoning the Doctor.   
  
Rose kept the watch with her at all times, in a pocket when she had one in her outfit and in her purse when she didn’t. It was strangely comforting to have it near and she took it as a sign that he really was in there though she dared not open it to be sure. Not that she doubted him. But having the watch close by did very little to satisfy the craving she had for his presence. The occasional whispers she caught from the watch–usually her name but one time she heard _love_ –were no substitute for the sound of his voice.   
  
She missed his smile, his laugh, his scent; the way his arms felt around her, the way his chest felt underneath her cheek, and his lips felt as they kissed. She missed hearing him talk endlessly; she missed the sweet silences between them. She missed watching telly with him. She missed the running. She missed falling asleep to his heartsbeat and soft humming, she missed waking up to his smile. She missed holding his hand.  
  
She missed _him_.  
  
Sometimes it became too much and she had to see him. She’d simply text Martha, ‘Where?’ and wait for her to reply before excusing herself to the bathroom or the break room, and went in search of him. Martha never questioned it, never tried to stop her.   
  
They helped, those brief glimpses she had of him. Always from a distance though and never long enough that he’d risk seeing her. She’d watch him converse with patients, visitors, and staff and her heart would ache every time he smiled. Sometimes she was able to hear the familiar timbre of his voice. She could pretend in those moments that it really was him. But almost always he’d do something–a certain expression or gesture that would scream _not the Doctor_ and she’d run before she saw another.   
  
For simplicity’s sake, she and Martha shared a two-bedroom flat. Theirs was located two blocks from the complex John lived in. The TARDIS was located near the hospital, only about a mile away. They could go to and from work quickly, stopping at the TARDIS if they had to, and they were close to John if anything happened. The TARDIS was alert enough to keep tabs on them all and had agreed to warn Rose if he was in danger. Anything else, though, had to be learned from Martha.   
  
There was nothing from the TARDIS now, just a faint hum in the back of Rose’s mind to let her know the ship still lived and hadn’t abandoned her and Martha.   
  
Since Martha had to work longer hours and through the night the times when she was on call, Rose did a large portion of the work around the flat, though Martha was always sure to do her chores. The mornings after Martha was on call, Rose was always sure to have something waiting in the microwave or fridge to be heated up so she could eat before collapsing in to bed. They hung out together when their schedules permitted. Martha would talk about her patients or what John Smith was up to. Sometimes they’d go to the cinema or go for runs to keep in shape. They visited the TARDIS every few days to keep her company.  
  
Rose used the hour alone in the flat to change into casual clothes, do the dishes, call to order pizza, and check the show times for _Bruce Almighty_. The pizza arrived fifteen minutes before Martha did. When Martha walked in, she set her bag on the table and immediately dropped onto the couch. Rose looked up from her laptop in surprise. She set it aside, opened the pizza box, tore off two slices and set them on a plate then handed it to Martha.   
  
“Rough day?” she asked. Martha sat up and accepted the plate. She bit into the first slice like she hadn’t eaten for days.   
  
Martha nodded.  
  
“I’m all ears.”  
  
She made a face and swallowed. “Well, Patrick Kaiser went in for his kidney transplant today but his body rejected it immediately. There was a mix up somewhere along the line and part of his information got swapped with somebody else’s entered that day. So someone, somewhere, is probably gonna go through the same thing. And I had to explain that to his family. Thank God I don’t have to worry about all the paperwork.” She took another bite of pizza and chewed slowly. “Tell you what though, I feel sorry for the poor fella who made the mix up because you can bet his job will be gone if they ever figure out exactly who did it. Probably his medical license, too, if he has one.”   
  
“Accidents happen,” Rose mused.   
  
Martha quirked an eyebrow. “Most accidents don’t cost thousands of dollars, hours of paperwork, and at least one healthy kidney.”  
  
“True.” She looked down at the pizza contemplatively. She’d already had two slices but she was still hungry. She’d been telling herself that she’d go make a small salad for the past ten minutes but that didn’t seem to be happening. Sod it. She tore another piece off and took a bite.   
  
“Iris Rooter came back today.”  
  
“Wasn’t she the one who broke her leg on a scooter?” That one had been pretty easy to remember. Rooter. Scooter.   
  
“Yep. I told her no more scooters until _after_ her leg had fully healed.”  
  
“What did she do?”  
  
“Hopped on a scooter, wrecked it, and broke her femur. It was so bad they had to operate to set it. So now her tibia _and_ her femur are broken. That girl isn’t gonna be walking for a long, long time and even then…” Martha’s mouth puckered. “She’s probably gonna be permanently crippled. I don’t understand. Did she not hear me? Did she think she wouldn’t get hurt?”  
  
“She’s fourteen. You can’t tell me you didn’t do something stupid when you were fourteen.”  
  
“Not that stupid. I never disobeyed doctors,” she added. “Anyway, let’s see, what else? Summer Winters had her baby today.”  
  
Rose snorted. “I can’t believe she didn’t keep her maiden name. I would if my married name would be a pun. Like Rose Bush.”  
  
“Winters is her maiden name, actually. Her married name is Hopper. …She says her parents were hippies,” she added.   
  
“That explains so much.”  
  
They both burst out laughing and Martha choked on her pizza. Rose thumped her on the back to help it go down. Martha wheezed, still laughing, and rubbed her chest. “It does,” she panted, “it really does.”  
  
“So what’d they name the kid?”  
  
“Anna.”   
  
She nodded. “What else?”  
  
“I told you one of the pediatric patients I worked with went home the other day–Macy Clearwater?”  
  
Rose nodded again.  
  
“Well, there’s a kid in her ward called Elliot. He’s one of the boys that got in that fight two weeks ago. I don’t know much about him other than that he’s got leukemia and he is mute. He’s not deaf and the cancer isn’t in his throat, he just chooses not to talk. None of the other children really connect with him so Macy was his only friend. He’s not handling her departure well. He won’t eat. He won’t leave his bed except for the loo and chemo.” She took another bite of the pizza and chewed slowly. “I can’t do much since he’s not one of mine but I told John about it. He’s been keeping an eye on Elliot since the fight.”  
  
Rose froze mid-chew for a second then continued. Swallowing, she asked, “What did he say?”  
  
“He said he’d talk to him today. I didn’t get a chance to ask him how it went.”   
  
“The Doctor could help him,” Rose said.   
  
“I think John can, too. They’re not completely different, Rose. You see him as this complete stranger but he’s….”  
  
Rose looked away. She shifted her leg and felt the familiar weight of the fob watch in her pocket.   
  
“And, uh, I’m not exactly sure how to tell you this, but… Has he always had sideburns?”  
  
“Yeah, ever since he regenerated. He was quite fascinated with them.”  
  
“Yeah, well, John shaved them off.”  
  
Rose blinked, looked up, and blinked again. “What?”   
  
“He shaved his sideburns off.”  
  
“He didn’t.”  
  
One corner of her mouth twisted upwards. “He did. It’s really weird.”  
  
Rose put her forehead in her hand and sighed. She didn’t like the thought that John was changing his body when it wasn’t really his to change. Though, all things considered, the lack of sideburns was nothing. They’d grow back sooner or later. “Thank God he didn’t wake up this morning and decide he wanted a tattoo.”  
  
“Oh, no, he’s getting a tattoo this weekend. He told me.”  
  
Her head snapped up. “He _what_?!” she shrieked. “Oh my God, the Doctor is going to flip when he wakes up and finds out. Please tell me he’s not gettin’ it on his–oh. Martha! That’s not funny!”   
  
Martha’s lip twitched and then she was roaring with laughter. The plate slipped off her knees and she leaned back against the couch, holding her stomach. Rose glared at her.  



	38. Journals and Sketchpads

  
The first dreams had been a week apart and he’d hardly given them a second thought. But then they started occurring every few days. That was when he began to write them down. Now they were happening almost every night and he was sure to record every detail he could remember when he awoke. On the occasions he awoke in the middle of the night, he would roll over and reach for his journal, which he kept on his nightstand, and scribble things down furiously, occasionally sketching things when he felt like had to.   
  
After that first day, it became a routine for John to bring his notebook with him to work. It was difficult to tell what Elliot was thinking but the little boy seemed to enjoy hearing all about his mad dreams. He should probably be making a visit to third floor and reading his journal to a psychiatrist but instead he was reading them to a cancer patient on the fifth. At least Elliot couldn’t label him a loony and get him fired.   
  
He saw a lot of himself in Elliot. Even though the boy had been very unfriendly to him when he first arrived, after learning more about him from the other children, he’d felt he had to help him after the fight with Devin. It was heartening to see him then befriend Macy Clearwater and then heartbreaking to see him quickly descend into depression upon her departure.   
  
Elliot was doing better now that John spent time reading to him. Yesterday he told him about the Doctor’s travelling companion: a beautiful woman named Rose. She had blonde hair and brown eyes, she was small enough that her head tucked right under his chin, but tall enough for him to easily kiss–no, tall enough for _the Doctor_ to easily kiss. When it came to Rose, it was especially important to make that distinction. What he felt for her was just apart of his dreams. The Doctor loved her. He did not. She and the Doctor were dreams. He was not.   
  
Violet was not either.   
  
He shook his head quickly. Best to not go down that road. Really. Besides, it was always advised that one never date a coworker. The awkwardness that could ensue if the relationship doesn’t work out aside, it’s not healthy for both members to be _constantly_ around each other. Especially in his line of work. He couldn’t allow himself to distracted from the people who relied on him. Even if the distraction was a pretty woman with blonde hair and brown eyes.   
  
_Stop it._  
  
After lunch, he stopped at his locker to grab his notebook then headed to the playroom where Elliot and the others in his ward would be. He was waiting for him at the table where he normally sat, drawing away as usual. The boy had a promising career ahead of him as an artist if he beat leukemia.  
  
As if sensing his approach, Elliot raised his head and looked right at him with piercing eyes that knew far too much for one so young. If he were honest, John would admit that Elliot could make him feel uneasy. The way he stared at him sometimes, like John was a puzzle he was solving, but couldn’t find where all the pieces went. And the way he had a knack for drawing things exactly John had pictured them.  
  
After the first day, Elliot started drawing scenes from what John read to him and they were exact in almost every detail. There had to be a logical explanation for it, of course. The kid liked science fiction. Perhaps they were each taking inspiration from the same show. He would show him rudimentary doodles of the creatures and things in his journal, Elliot would look long and hard at the images, and the next day present him his renditions, which were always far better than John’s. He drew a Dalek so perfectly that John was almost afraid of it.   
  
Elliot didn’t wait for John to ask, immediately flipping back to the drawings he’d made since yesterday. John shifted around in the child-sized seat until he was relatively comfortable, then leaned forward to look. He should’ve expected it. Really, he should’ve. After all, she’d played a big role yesterday, but seeing her there on the paper before him made his breath catch. _Rose._  
  
Her hair fell like a curtain over her shoulders and she had a rose tucked near her right temple. She smiled up at him like she knew something he didn’t. She was beautiful.   
  
The next page was her again, but unlike the other one, it was in full color. She stood in the doorway of the Doctor’s blue box, a gold light streaming out, surrounding her. Her eyes glowed dangerously and a ball of light seemed to be building in the palm of her raised hand.   
  
Elliot tapped the words scrawled beneath the picture with his finger.  
  
 _Bad Wolf_  
  
John gave his head a quick shake. “Quite. You really are good at coloring, Elliot. How did you get her to glow?”  
  
As usual, Elliot didn’t answer. He flipped to the next page. Three Daleks standing between two panels with the light from the blue box hitting them head on. He knew what was happening here. The Doctor was in the floor just a few feet away, between them and Rose, and was just as horrified as they were. He’d sent her away to save her while he stayed behind to defeat the Daleks and ultimately perish himself. But she’d come back for him as a creature of time itself. She’d saved him.   
  
Rose was always coming back to him. The Doctor never could understand why.  
  
Elliot flipped one final time and the Daleks were dissolving into dust.   
  
John forced himself to swallow past the sudden lump in his throat and smile. “Brilliantly done.”  
  
Elliot smiled.  
  
“Ready to hear more? Today’s little…adventure takes place a while after that last one. At least a year, I’d wager.” This was nothing unusual. John’s dreams jumped around all the time. The Doctor had been alive for nearly a millennia and John never quite knew what point of his life would feature next.  
  
“They’ve got someone new with them. I don’t know her name yet, I’m afraid, or what she really looks like. I never saw her face. But she’s shorter than Rose by a few inches, she’s got dark skin, and black hair that she likes to wear up.”  
  
He nodded.   
  
“I don’t know how she met the Doctor and Rose, either, they didn’t say, but from the way they acted I reckon she’s been around a little while. They’re right here in modern America, too. A town called Blackwood Falls up in New England. How about that? They’re having an adventure in America for once, even though it…happens to be the part of the country with ‘England’ attached to it.”   
  
Elliot rolled his eyes. Two days ago he’d interrupted the story to hold up a sign that read in big, blocky letters: _**WHY IS IT ALWAYS ENGLAND?**_  
  
John chuckled. “And the best part? It’s Halloween. Free candy! But it’s not all fun and games afraid–but, _really_ , when is it?”   
  
Elliot smiled and leaned onto the table to listen. The bad guys were the remnants of an ancient alien species called Hervoken. They were very tall with thin bodies, extremely long hands, and enormous heads like jack-o-lanterns, and they were the enemies of a species called the Carrionites and they had been at war many eons ago. One lone Hervoken ship escaped while rest of their species were banished to the darkness. They lay dormant in the earth for a long, long time, until the ship was repaired in the early 21st century and they planned to repower the ship using the inhabitants themselves.  
  
Like any normal dream, the tale was disjointed, with pieces missing and events happening out of order–and since John wrote things down in the order in which they happened in his dream, he often had to mark his place and read something from later before going back–and it was never from anyone else’s point of view. He’d recently purchased a journal that he planned to copy all the stories into soon in the order he dreamt them–although he’d rearrange them so all those events were read in the right order. He was also in the process of creating a timeline of these stories so there would be some way to determine chronological order later on.   
  
When John was finished reading, he shut the journal, and set it down on the table to wait for Elliot to finish drawing. His eyebrows were furrowed in concentration, the tip of his tongue poking out between his lips, and his arm jerked around randomly as he guided the pencil across the paper. John wondered what had captured his interest enough to prompt an early start. He leaned forward to have a look.   
  
Elliot’s hand froze and he lifted his head, glaring at him pointedly, and waited until John retreated before going back to work.   
  
John let his eyes drift across the room. The other children weren’t paying the two of them any mind having long since grown accustomed to him. They probably liked having him there, too, since his presence tended to prevent trouble, with the exception of the occasional ‘I was playing with that!’ arguments. The monitors usually resolved those without his help though he did like to throw stern looks at the troublesome kids to back them up.   
  
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he suddenly knew he was being watched. He glanced around the room but saw no one staring so he turned towards the door. He figured it was a woman from the height and build and the shoulder-length blonde hair, but she darted away before he could get a good look at her face. Frowning, he started to get up, but then Dr. Violet Lewis walked into the room. For a second he thought it might’ve been her in the doorway but he realized that wasn’t true. Violet’s hair was more of a sandy blonde than bleached and a few inches longer than the other woman’s.  
  
She saw him looking and smiled warmly at him. His heart beat just a little bit faster and he smiled back.   
  
He felt something prod his arm. He looked down at Elliot just as he tapped him again with the end of his pencil. Seeing he had his attention, he set the pencil down and held up his sketchpad for inspection. John recognized the creature immediately as one of the Hervoken. He raised his eyebrows but found he really wasn’t surprised at the accuracy, not after the drawings of Rose earlier. He was still reeling from it.   
  
John smiled. “Spot on.”   
  
Elliot’s mouth twisted as if to say _of course_.   
  
“Now, second order of business, I’ve purchased a journal to copy these into. Leather bound, sturdy paper, with a lock. I’m going to start copy everything into it soon, but I’m going to need pictures. Interested?”  
  
His eyes lit up like it was Christmas morning and he nodded vigorously, holding up his sketchpad.  
  
“No, no. You keep that. The pages won’t fit so what I’ll do is, while I’m writing, I’ll leave empty spaces on the page for new drawings to be added in. Sound good?”  
  
Elliot nodded again.  
  
“I’ll bring the journal in as soon as I start working on it. You can read it and fill in the spaces how you want. I hope you can draw small.”  
  
Elliot’s mind was buzzing after Dr. Smith left to go about the rest of his day. He would be on call tonight so that meant no new dreams tomorrow. That gave Elliot plenty of time to look and decide what he wanted to put in the journal. His eyes widened as something occurred to him. _I was just asked to illustrate a book!_  
  
He couldn’t wait to tell Macy when she came to visit.   
  
But how was he supposed to know what to do? It wasn’t like just drawing in a sketchpad. The pictures had to tell the story just as much as the words did. There were even some books that didn’t have words at all. He glanced at the bookshelf across the room. Plenty of picture books over there, maybe they could give him an idea of what to do.  
  
Pushing his chair back from the table, he hurried over to the bookshelf, carefully avoiding the other kids and the toys littering the floor. He took a moment to scan the titles and then started grabbing some picture books he recognized and then a few small novels. Two kids stopped what they were doing and stared at him. He ignored them and struggled to balance the stack of books in his arms. He decided twelve was enough to be getting along with for the moment and he carefully made his way back to the table. The thud as the stack hit the table attracted the attention of a few more kids.  
  
Still paying them no mind, he sat back down and picked up the first book, _The Pokey Little Puppy_ , and started to read.   
  
In Elliot’s mind there’d always been three types of things worth reading: picture books, novels, and comics. Comics and novels were at opposite ends of the spectrum–one using only pictures and the other using only words–with picture books occupying the space in between. But picture books were mostly for babies so they could get used to words and pictures.   
  
As he slowly made his way through the pile of books, he came to the decision that Dr. Smith’s journal should be more like a novel than a normal picture book. He was very good at describing things with words and adding in too many pictures would be redundant and a waste of space. Plus, anyone who read it would have to be older than the age group that normal picture books were aimed at. The irony of that didn’t escape Elliot since he was still in that age group.   
  
One of the _Bearenstine Bears_ books he was reading gave him a really good idea. One of the pictures, instead of a scene, was just of a particular object that was being talked about that page. On another page there was just a picture of the new character being introduced.   
  
Elliot reached over and grabbed his sketchbook. He flipped through the pages until he reached the stuff he’d drawn from Dr. Smith’s journal and then slowly made his way through them. He hadn’t really thought about it before, but he hadn’t drawn very many scenes. It was mostly just pictures of the separate people, places, and things that his mojo had picked up on.   
  
And that was another thing.   
  
He frowned as he thought about it again. Whenever he listened to Dr. Smith read, certain images would just appear in his mind the same way memories and images did from other people. Like the dreams were _memories_. But that was impossible because that would mean the doctor was…well, _the Doctor_! But he couldn’t be.   
  
Dr. Smith was a strange man and everything Elliot picked up on from him was warped and murky, except for the things from his dreams. The exact opposite of how it was for everyone else…. But Dr. Smith was human! You couldn’t just switch species like that! Well, some vampires and werewolves could, but that was venom and magic and blood and stuff. An alien couldn’t become a human.  
  
Still, it’d be cool though.   
  
But even though the dreams were like normal memories, about half of them were incomplete. Like some things were cut off or the details were blurry or missing altogether. After several hours of frustration the first time, he decided to not bother with those incomplete drawings.   
  
There’d been one today: the nameless woman with Rose and the Doctor. He’d seen her like she was standing right in front of him, arms folded, hair pulled up, with a red leather jacket. Her head was there and he knew what shape it was but her face had been missing. Well, not missing, exactly, it’d been there, but it’d been like trying to pick out the details of a penny at the bottom of a dirty pond. Even now, focusing as hard as he was, he couldn’t make her face clear up.   
  
“Okay, everyone!” He recognized the voice Miss James, the British student doctor, but didn’t look up. “Everyone needs to put their toys and books away now.”  
  
It was nagging at him. It felt like her face should obvious but he just couldn’t see it. Gritting his teeth in frustration, he shut the sketchbook and resolved to try drawing her later. Maybe that would give her face time to clear up.  
  
He carried the books back over to the shelf and one of the girls helped him put them away. He didn’t know her name. She’d never told it to him.   
  
The next morning he wasn’t scheduled for anything so he sat on his bed and continued to work on his drawing of the nameless woman. He was nearly done but she still remained faceless. He’d even gone into very intense detail with the shading to give his brain more time to work on clearing her face up but it _just wouldn’t make sense._  
  
Dr. Smith came by to check on him before he went home but Elliot didn’t show him the sketch of the woman. Instead he flipped to one of the pages he used to write on and informed him that he had lots of ideas for the journal.  
  
John read and reread the sentence three times before smiling at the boy. “Good to hear. Tell me all about them on Thursday. I need to get back to my flat before I drop.”  
  
Elliot’s eyes widened and gestured towards the door and John laughed. “Don’t worry, I’ve got another hour left in me, I think.” He repeated the gesture. “Alright, I’m going. Have a good day, Elliot!”  
  
Elliot gave him a quick thumbs up and, laughing, John headed for the lockers.   
  
He didn’t run into Violet on the way like he’d hoped but he did nearly knock Martha James over as she was exiting the women’s locker room. She was far more alert than he was and she caught him by his upper arms. She released him, her hands hovering a few inches away until she was sure he wasn’t going to topple over, and smiled at him.   
  
Martha was a bit of an enigma. She was from London like he was and they both arrived around the same time. That in itself was strange. What were the odds two Londoners would move to the _exact_ same town and both get jobs in its hospital? There was this feeling in the back of his mind that he knew her and she acted like they were old friends sometimes but she agreed that they’d never met before now. They hadn’t even come from the same part of London or attended the same medical school or worked in the same hospital before now. But when he’d first met her she’d looked, well, alone and scared but she’d done a good job of hiding it. For some reason he simply couldn’t explain, he’d felt like he should take her on as one of his charges.   
  
The way her eyes had lit up was almost enough to make it worth it.   
  
She seemed rather fond of him. Part of him wondered if she fancied him but the more logical part of him argued that there was no real sign of that. If anything it was just that enjoyed the company of someone who understood what it was like to be a foreigner in a country that was so similar to her own and yet glaringly different. Someone who knew how to appreciate a cup of tea, and longed for a nice plate of fish n’ chips that didn’t come from the local Long John Silver’s, and didn’t know the difference between the NFL and AFL. Or why a victory in the NFL merited shotguns being fired off in celebration.   
  
But sometimes she stared at him when she thought he wasn’t looking. Like she was waiting for something that never happened. Sometimes she just seemed utterly shocked at things he said and did. Things that, in his mind, at least, weren’t out of the ordinary. Like his hair, he didn’t style it or anything, and she found it utterly bizarre. The day he’d arrived after shaving off his sideburns she’d looked scandalized. Just yesterday he was at lunch and one of his students offered him a pear. He hadn’t known she was watching him until he took a bite, nodded, and she dropped her water bottle.   
  
Martha was strange all right, but it was nothing her skills didn’t make up for. She was a smart young woman and she knew her stuff. The way she responded to situations seemed to indicate she also had a lot of experience. Far more than her peers at the same level. It was more than a difference in curriculums. She said things with confidence like she was used to her judgments being accurate and was sure this one would be as well, whereas her peers were just a bit hesitant, thinking they might be right but their lack of experience made them question themselves. Yet she wasn’t arrogant and she took instruction well, particularly from him.   
  
“Easy, doctor,” she cautioned. “We can’t have you falling over.”   
  
And that was another thing. Normally she’d call him John or Mr. Smith like all the others but once in a while she called him ‘doctor’ like it was his name. It always threw him off.   
  
“I’m alright,” he said.  
  
She looked him up and down critically. “No you’re not. You really look like you’re about to fall over.”  
  
“Just a long night. I’ll be fine.”  
  
She nodded. “And how’s Elliot?”   
  
“Good. He’s–he’s doing good. He’s a bit busy with a project he agreed to help me with.”  
  
“Wouldn’t have anything to do with what’s in that notebook, would it?”  
  
John smiled. “I’m moving it all into a journal. Elliot’s agreed to do the art for it. He has remarkable skill. He draws the things I come up with better than I can.”  
  
“Well, if your art skills are anything like your penmanship skills, that doesn’t surprise me.”  
  
“Oi!”   
  
Martha grinned. “Get outta here, Mr. Smith. Go sleep.”  
  
John didn’t own a car. He’d never found it necessary in London and certainly didn’t here. Bridgeton had it’s own small bus system that he could rely on if he didn’t feel like walking the three miles between his flat and the hospital. His conversation with Martha had almost caused him to miss the bus but he managed to fly across the street to the bus stop before it departed.   
  
He sank into one of the seats at the front of the bus and leaned his head against the window. The familiar shuddering of the bus as it cruised along was relaxing and he had to force his eyes to stay open. When he saw his building coming up, he pulled the cord and picked up his jacket off the seat beside him.   
  
“Good night,” the driver said knowingly as John passed him on his way out. John chuckled.   
  
He pulled his keys out of his pocket as he trudged up the stairs to his flat. The first floor was silent except for snatches of the radio he could hear through the doors. On the second floor, he could clearly hear _The Price is Right_ theme song coming through the door to apartment 2A, and in 2B the two kids were shrieking at their telly. Today it was something about clues. The third floor was completely silent since his neighbor worked during the day and the dog never barked.   
  
John smiled as he let himself into his flat. Everything was normal.   
  
Deciding to forgo a quick meal, he set his stuff down in his room and immediately changed into his pajamas. He pulled the blue notebook from his bag and placed it on his bedside table next to the pen. He shut the curtains against the midmorning sunlight then collapsed gratefully into bed. He was asleep within minutes.


	39. The Dream

  
“Are you sure about that T-shirt?”   
  
Rose looked down at her Union Jack shirt thoughtfully. Her hair was long and wavy, her bangs pinned up on the top of her head. “Too early to say. I’m taking it out for a spin.”  
  
…  
  
 _Oh, great. She’s gone_ again.   
  
Humans were his favorite species. Lovely bunch. Except they all had an annoying habit of not staying they were supposed to. Honestly, they were as bad as children. And his favorite human was the worst of all sometimes.   
  
“You know,” he sighed as he plucked the cat off a rubbish bin, “One day. Just one day, maybe…I’m gonna meet someone who get’s the whole ‘don’t wander off’ thing. Nine hundred years of phone box travel, it’s the only thing left that might surprise me.”  
  
And then the TARDIS started ringing.  
  
…  
  
“What exactly is this thing?”  
  
“No idea.”  
  
“And why are we chasing it?”  
  
“It’s mauve and dangerous! And about thirty seconds from the center of London.”   
  
…  
  
 _Riiiing!_  
  
“Don’t answer it.”  
  
He hadn’t heard her arrive. It was as if she’d simply materialized there in that alley. She was young, maybe fifteen. Her brown hair was twisted into two practical braids and she wore an old navy coat and boot. Her eyes flickered between him and the TARDIS.  
  
“It’s not for you.”  
  
 _Riiiing!_  
  
…  
  
“There was a bomb. A bomb that wasn’t a bomb. Fell the other end of Limehouse Green Station.”  
  
…  
  
“Mu-u-u-u-u-u-m-m-y-y-y-y!”   
  
A little boy with a gasmask on his face peered through the window at the feasting children.  
  
…  
  
“Please let me in.”  
  
“You mustn’t let him touch ya!”  
  
“What happens if he touches me?”  
  
…  
  
“Nancy always gets the best food for us!”  
  
…  
  
“What would you say was the cause of death?”  
  
…  
  
“I wanna find a blonde in a Union Jack. I mean a specific one, I didn’t just wake up this morning with a craving.”  
  
The children gathered around the table laughed. He smiled. Nancy didn’t.  
  
…  
  
“They’re not dead.”  
  
…  
  
“No mummies here. No one here but us chickens.” Oh, she’s gone again. She’s rather good at that. “Well, this chicken.”  
  
…  
  
“How’d you follow me here?” she demanded.   
  
“I’m good at following, me. I’ve got the nose for it.”  
  
“People can’t usually follow me if I don’t want ‘em to.”  
  
“My nose has special powers.”  
  
“Yeah? That why it’s so–”  
  
“What?”  
  
She licked her lips, fighting a smirk. “Nothin’.”   
  
“ _What?_ ”  
  
“Nothin’! …Do your ears have special powers, too?”  
  
Cheeky girl. “What are you trying to say?”  
  
“Goodnight, mister.”  
  
…   
  
“Can I ask you a question? Who did you lose?”  
  
“What?”   
  
He turned to face her. “The way you look after all those kids. It’s because you lost somebody, isn’t it? You’re doing all of this to make up for it.”  
  
Nancy stared at him. “My little brother,” she said at last. “Jamie. …One night, I went out looking for food. Same night that thing fell.” She nodded towards the object in the center of the fence. “Told him not to follow me, I told him it was dangerous. But he just…” Tears formed in her eyes and she swallowed. “He didn’t like being on his own.”   
  
“What happened?”  
  
“In the middle of an air raid? What do you think happened?”  
  
…  
  
He very nearly growled out loud when he saw the grinning man Rose had with her. His clothing was from this time period but that device he just stashed in his pocket was definitely not. He was pretty. Very pretty.   
  
Not _again_.  
  
“Good evening. Hope we’re not interrupting–Jack Harkness. I’ve been hearing all about you on the way over.”  
  
…  
  
“That’s what you chased through the Time Vortex. It’s space junk. I wanted to kid you it was valuable. It’s empty. I made sure of it. Nothing but a shell. I threw it at you. Saw your time travel vehicle–love the retro look, by the way, nice panels–threw you the bait–”  
  
“Bait?” Rose demanded.  
  
“I wanted to sell it to you and then destroy it before you found out it was junk.”  
  
“You said it was a _war_ ship.”  
  
Jack scoffed. “They have ambulances in wars.” He stalked away from them, annoyed. “It’s a con. I was conning you–that's what I am. I'm a con man. I thought you were Time Agents. You're not, are you?”  
  
“Just a couple more free-lancers.” Rose replied with venom. His lips twitched upward. If Harkness kept on she was likely to rip him a new one soon.  
  
…  
  
They sat straight up, the horde of gas-masked people, all calling for their mummies. He, Rose, and Jack looked around at them warily.   
  
“What’s happening?” Rose asked.  
  
“Mummy.”  
  
“Mummy!”  
  
“Mummy?”  
  
“I don’t know,” he replied as the creatures began to rise from their beds.   
  
The three time travelers backed slowly towards the wall as the creatures moved towards them, still calling for their mummies. He could see their skulls through the eye holes–smooth and blank. Empty.   
  
He glanced at Dr. Constantine and thought of the ghastly transformation he’d seen just minutes go, recalling what Nancy had told him.  
  
“Don’t let them touch you.”   
  
“What happens if they touch us?”  
  
“You’re lookin’ at it.”  
  
“Mummy.”  
  
“Mummy?”  
  
“Mummy!”  
  
“Mu-u-u-u-m-m-y-y!”  
  
…  
  
“GO. TO. YOUR. ROOM!”  
  
…  
  
“I’m really glad that worked. Those would’ve been terrible last words.”  
  
…  
  
“Sonic blaster, 51st century. Weapon Factories of Villengard.”   
  
“You’ve been to the factories?”  
  
“Once.”  
  
“Well, they’re gone now. Destroyed. The main reactor went critical. Vaporized the lot.”  
  
“Like I said–once. There’s a banana grove there now. I like bananas. Bananas are good.”  
  
…  
  
It was a child’s room. A small bed in the center, a bunch of toys littered about, and scattered amongst them, stuck to the walls, were dozens of pieces of paper all containing a drawing of a young woman.   
  
“A child?” Jack asked in disbelief. “I suppose this explains ‘mummy.’”   
  
…  
  
“Always ‘are you my mummy?’ Like he doesn’t know… Why doesn’t he know?”   
  
…  
  
“There are these children living rough around the bomb site. They come out during air-raids looking for food. Suppose they were there when this thing–whatever it was–landed?”  
  
“It was a med-ship,” Jack insisted, aggravated now. “It was harmless.”   
  
“Yes, you keep saying ‘harmless.’ Suppose one of them was affected–altered?”  
  
Rose swallowed and he could see the realization dawning on her.   
  
_Clever girl, now you’re getting it. This is your pretty boy’s fault._   
  
“Altered how?”  
  
…  
  
“Who has a sonic screwdriver?”  
  
“I do.”  
  
“Who looks at a screwdriver and thinks ‘Ooh, this could be a little more sonic?’”   
  
…   
  
“It’s controlling them?!”   
  
“It is them. It’s every living thing in this hospital.”  
  
…  
  
“Okay so he’s vanished into thin air. Why is always the _great_ looking ones who do that?”  
  
He looked up at her. “I’m making an effort not to be insulted.”   
  
She waved her hand at him dismissively. “I mean…men.”  
  
Oh. “Okay. Thanks. That _really_ helped.”  
  
He tried not to let her see how much that hurt. _You old fool,_ he told himself. _Of course she wouldn’t see you as someone she could–_  
  
“Rose? Doctor? Can you hear me?”  
  
…  
  
“A sonic, er…oh never mind.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“It’s sonic, okay? Let’s leave it at that.”  
  
“Disrupter? Cannon? What?”   
  
“It’s sonic! Totally sonic! I am sonic-ed up!”  
  
“A sonic WHAT?!”  
  
“SCREWDRIVER!”   
  
…  
  
“Doesn’t the universe implode or something if you…dance?”  
  
“Well, I’ve got the moves but I wouldn’t want to boast.”  
  
He heard the wheelchair stop moving and she stood up. Now what was she doing?   
  
Did she just turn the music up?  
  
She walked towards him, smiling coyly.   
  
…  
  
 _“And I can hear you. Coming to find you. Coming to fi-i-i-i-nd yo-o-o-u.”_  
  
…  
  
He flicked his hand this way and that, showing her the way the nanogene cloud followed his hand. “Sub-atomic robots. There’s millions of them in here, see? Burned my hand on the console when we landed–all better now. They activate when the bulk head’s sealed. Check you out for damage, fix any physical flaws.”  
  
 _Wait._  
  
…  
  
“You got the moves? Show me your moves?”  
  
…  
  
“Most people notice when they’ve been teleported. You guys are so sweet.”  
  
…  
  
Rose was special. She was light and happiness. Kind and compassionate and brimming with life. She could make anyone trust her enough to tell his or her life story just by asking. Even ‘Captain’ Jack was susceptible.   
  
“So you used to _be_ a Time Agent–now you’re trying to con them?”  
  
“If it makes me sound any better, it’s not for the money.”  
  
“For what?”  
  
“Woke up one day when I was working for them, found they’d stolen two years of my memories. I’d like them back.”  
  
“They stole your memories?”  
  
“Two years of my life. No idea what I did. Your friend over there doesn’t trust me. And for all I know…he’s right not to.”   
  
…  
  
The sirens wailed loudly.   
  
Jack looked up. “Ah, here they come again.”   
  
“All we need. …Didn’t you say a bomb was gonna land _here_?”  
  
…  
  
“Nancy what age are you?”  
  
…  
  
“Relax, he’s a 51st century guy. He’s just a bit more flexible when it comes to dancing?”  
  
“ _How_ flexible?”  
  
“Well, by his time, you lot have spread out across half the galaxy.”  
  
“Meaning?!”  
  
He grinned at her discomfort. “So many species, so little time…”  
  
“What, that’s what we do when we get out there? That’s our mission? We seek new life, and…and…”  
  
“Dance.”   
  
…  
  
“What do you expect in a Chula medical transporter? Bandages? Cough drops?”  
  
…  
  
“Mummy?”  
  
…  
  
“Getting it now, are we?”  
  
…  
  
“What's life? Life's easy. A quirk of matter. Nature's way of keeping meat fresh. Nothing to a nanogene. One problem, though - these nanogenes - they're not like the ones on your ship. This lot have never seen a human being before. Don't know what a human being's supposed to look like. All they’ve got to go on is one little body, and there’s not a lot left. But they carry right on. They do what they're programmed to do, they patch it up. Can't tell what’s gasmask and what’s skull, but they do their best. Then off they fly–off they go, work to be done. ‘Cos you see now they think they know what people should look like and it's time to fix all the rest.”  
  
“I didn’t know.”  
  
 _Of course you didn’t, you idiot. So blinded by your own need for revenge you didn’t stop to think how many others you’d end up hurting._  
  
…  
  
“It’s a fully equipped Chula warrior, yes. All that weapons tech in the hands of a hysterical four year old looking for his mummy. And now there's an army of them.”  
  
The bombsite was completely surrounded by the gas-mask people–a small army made of hospital patients and staff, soldiers, and others who’d been unfortunate enough to be caught by the nanogenes. The only thing between them and the would-be army was a bunch of metal wires. Nothing to those with the strength and skill of Chula warriors.  
  
“Why don’t they attack?” Jack wondered.  
  
“Good little soldiers, waiting for their commander.” he replied.  
  
“The child?”  
  
“Jamie,” Nancy corrected.  
  
“What?”  
  
The girl’s voice hardened as she glared at him. “Not the child. Jamie.”  
  
…  
  
“It’s my fault,” Nancy whimpers.  
  
“No.”  
  
“It is. It’s all my fault.”  
  
“How can it be your–”  
  
 _Oh. Oh no. No, no. It can’t be._  
  
“Mummy!”  
  
“Mummy?”   
  
“Mummy?”  
  
“Mummy!”  
  
“Mummy.”  
  
“Mummy! Mummy I’m here!”  
  
“Are you my mummy?”  
  
 _It is._  
  
“Nancy, what age are you?”  
  
…  
  
“He’s not your brother is he?”  
  
Nancy, still crying, shakes her head in shame.  
  
“A teenage single mother in 1941. So you hid. You lied. You even lied to him.”  
  
…  
  
“Are you my mummy?”  
  
“Yes. Yes. I _am_ your mummy.”  
  
“Mummy?”  
  
“I’m here.”  
  
…  
  
“Shhh! Come on, please. Come on, you clever little nanogenes, figure it out!” he murmured. “The mother! She’s the mother! That’s gotta be enough information. Figure it out!”  
  
“What’s happening?” she whispered.   
  
“See!” he pointed to the cloud of nanogenes surrounding the embracing mother and child. “It’s recognizing the same DNA.”  
  
…  
  
“WELCOME BACK!” he crowed to the little boy beneath the gas mask, smiling up at him. “Twenty years ‘til pop music–you’re gonna love it!”  
  
…  
  
“Doctor, that bomb…”  
  
“Taken care of it.”  
  
“How?!”  
  
“Psychology!”   
  
…  
  
“Look at you beamin’ away like you’re father Christmas.”  
  
“Who says I’m not–red bicycle when you were twelve?”  
  
“…What?!”   
  
…  
  
Oh he needed more days like this.   
  
A little of reprograming to the nanogenes and he sent them off to fix their mistakes. They shot out in a golden stream, surrounding all the soldiers, racing through their bodies, fixing them, and restoring them to who they were. Better than who they were. Completely and totally healthy.  
  
“Everybody lives, Rose. Just this once. EVERYBODY LIVES!”  
  
Rose laughed in amazement.   
  
…  
  
“Dr. Constantine! My leg’s grown back! When I come to the hospital, I had one leg!”   
  
…  
  
“Setting this to self-destruct, soon as everybody’s clear. History says there was an explosion here. Who am I to argue with history?”  
  
“Usually the first in line.”  
  
He grinned at her and she returned the expression, eyes shining, and if the weren’t right next to the metal hunk responsible for the mess, set to explode in under two minutes, he’d probably swoop down and kiss her.  
  
…  
  
“What about Jack? Why’d he say goodbye.”  
  
Oh. _Forgot about that._  
  
…  
  
“Welcome to the TARDIS.”  
  
  
“Much bigger on the inside…”  
  
“You’d better be.”  
  
“I think what the Doctor’s _trying_ to say is…you may cut in.”  
  
No, actually, that was _not_ what he was trying to say, and it’d probably be best if _Captain_ Jack understood that.   
  
“Rose!” He flipped the right switch to change the track. “I’ve just remembered! …I can dance!”  
  
…  
  
 _Welcome to the TARDIS. Hands off the blonde._  
  


~*~

  
  
John’s eyes flew open and he inhaled deeply.   
  
He blinked several times as his mind pulled itself back into reality and established his location. It always took longer with these dreams. Like he couldn’t figure out which world was real.  
  
Yawning, he sat up and rubbed his eyes.  
  
Not for the first time it occurred to him he should probably pay a visit to the psychiatric ward. Especially after last night’s adventure; gas mask zombies, of all things. Especially that–that boy, lost, afraid, and alone. Terrifying. The Doctor had gotten close enough to peer into its eyeholes. There’d been nothing beyond it, just smooth, flat skin. Empty.   
  
John shuddered.   
  
He rubbed his eyes once more then reached for his notebook. He had to start first thing on this or he’d wind up forgetting. A few of the earliest entries were missing information for this very reason. He uncapped the pen and flipped to an empty page. Chewing on the end thoughtfully, he thought through the first snatches of the dream and tried to discern which of them was the beginning. He finally decided to start on the ship.  
  
 _We were chasing something through the Time Vortex. It’d been flagged as mauve (apparently this is the color for danger–not sure why) and was heading right for London. We landed in 1941, right in the middle of World War II.  
  
Rose had a new Union Jack T-shirt. I wasn’t too sure about it and neither was Rose. When I asked her about it she said, “I’m taking it out for a spin.” _  
  
John continued writing for a good fifteen minutes before his stomach grumbled loudly and, glancing at the clock, he realized he hadn’t eaten in over twelve hours hours. He put the pen in the crease and closed the notebook around it. He carried it with him into the kitchen, setting it down on the counter while he went about making supper. His culinary skills weren’t too spectacular but he made do with things from the store that required minimal work. It was better than take out every time he was hungry at home. The canteen at the hospital didn’t necessarily have the best food but at least they served things better than instant mac ‘n cheese or frozen lasagna.   
  
While the lasagna was heating up in the microwave, he opened the journal and continued to write. He kept working as he ate, pausing in his writing to draw out some of the images in his mind. Elliot would undoubtedly recreate far better versions of them soon but it helped John to organize his thoughts. Plus he liked having his own drawings in here. They were in many ways the rough drafts, just like the out-of-order dreams. Elliot’s work would feature in the final product.   
  
This appeared to be the first meeting with Jack Harkness, who appeared in his dreams for the first time the other night with the Daleks and deadly game shows. He had to special for some reason. John knew his name, for one, and he could see his face clearly. Rose was the only other person in his dreams who he knew this way and had appeared more than once. There were others, of course, but he never saw them or if he knew what they looked like he couldn’t name them.   
  
And like Rose, he was the only one to actually trigger something in John. When he thought of Rose, his heart beat just a bit faster and his hands twitched, wanting to reach out and grab hers. But there was something about Jack. Something… _off_. Just thinking about the man sent a shiver down John’s spine and made his stomach clench uneasily.  
  
John sighed, setting down the pen, and rubbed his eyes tiredly. It was after eight in the evening by now and his earlier nap hadn’t done much to alleviate his fatigue in the long run. He just needed to get the ending written down before falling back to sleep just in case he had another dream.   
  
_The nanogenes recognized the shared DNA between Jamie and Nancy and noted the irregularities. They realized the error and modified Jamie one last time, returning him to his proper form. I was able to remove the mask and beneath it was a perfectly ordinary, smiling little boy.  
  
Jack showed up and caught the bomb with his ship, just as I’d intended. He bid Rose farewell and took the bomb away to destroy it. I summoned the nanogenes floating around us and reprogrammed them to repair the damage they’d caused throughout the city and then shut down upon completion. They did as they were instructed and the gas mask zombies were restored to their rightful selves, completely healthy. I overheard one woman saying she had a new leg.   
  
Everybody lived. That never happens.  
  
As the medical staff cleared the area, I set the Chula ambulance to self-destruct. It got rid of the alien tech  and the explosion would fit with Jack’s story from earlier.  
  
After all, who am I to argue with history?  
  
Rose, of course, answered perfectly. “Usually the first in line.”   
  
Afterwards, we returned to the TARDIS and I was ecstatic. (Apparently at one point I decided to play Father Christmas and delivered a red bicycle to Rose on her twelfth Christmas.) But then Rose mentioned Jack saying goodbye before. It occurred to me then that it would be next to impossible for Jack to dispose of the bomb if it was being kept in stasis. That wouldn’t hold forever and unless Jack had a way to eject it while keeping it in stasis, it would explode in the ship with Jack.  
  
Somehow I was able to land my ship inside Jack’s not long before it exploded. Rose tried to teach me to dance while we waited for him to notice us. He was thrown off by the interior of the ship but he recovered quickly.   
  
I was giving him another chance but I warned him that he had to prove himself before I forgave him.   
  
Rose decided then to be herself and invited Jack to dance. So I switched the music to a song I knew and remembered how to dance. Perhaps one of my more clever moments, I think. She enjoyed it, smiling and laughing, and I think she knew I was up to something.  
  
When we finished, I gave Jack a firm look. He could stay with us for a while, he could flirt with them, he could shag his way through the population of anywhere we visited, but if he made a move on Rose then I’d toss him into a black hole.   
  
He got the message. _  
  
John smiled, chuckling to himself, and set down the pen. Done.  
  


~*~

  
  
Elliot was waiting for John when he walked into the playroom on Thursday. He was surprised. Normally he would be hard at work when John arrived but today he was sitting up straight in his chair, staring at the door expectantly. He waved when he saw John walk in then slapped his palm against the tabletop commandingly.   
  
John laughed as he sat down in the child-sized chair. “Excited?”   
  
Elliot nodded and held up his sketchpad, already open to the appropriate picture. It was the new woman that’d been with the Doctor and Rose last time. He recognized the ponytail and leather jacket and both were exact in every detail. There was just one problem: she was faceless. John was surprised. He’d expected Elliot to know what she looked like the same way he always seemed to know these things.  
  
“Why doesn’t she have a face?” he asked.  
  
Elliot scowled and pointed right at John like it was all his fault.  
  
“I don’t…understand.”  
  
The boy rolled his eyes and opened a small red notepad John had never seen before, writing a single sentence on the page. _Because you don’t know what she looks like._  
  
John didn’t say anything for a long time afterwards.   



	40. Smith and Lewis

  
  
One of his final appointments went longer than he’d expected and by the time he stopped by his locker, he was over half an hour late. He left the locker room at a dead run and just like cars would veer for an oncoming ambulance, people got out of the way for the running doctor. They probably thought there was some emergency he was hurrying to get to and the thought made him chuckle to himself.   
  
John slowed to a walk as he neared the playroom, pausing outside to catch his breath, and brushed his hair away from his forehead. He headed into the room with an apology already forming on his lips…and stopped dead.  
  
Elliot was at his usual table, doodling away, but there was someone else sitting with him. Elliot raised his head and smiled at John. Violet Lewis turned and smiled as well.  
  
John felt the blood rushing to his face but he recovered quickly, crossing the room in a few strides. He sat down in his usual chair across from Elliot. “Sorry I’m late,” he apologized.   
  
Elliot shrugged like it was no big deal. John was getting very good at reading his body language. He’d been around him long enough that he was starting to understand what the different smiles and frowns meant, how one type of nod could mean one thing and another meant something entirely different. Everything from the way he stared at something to how hard he gripped a pencil had meaning. It was just a matter of translation.   
  
“It’s fine,” Violet answered.   
  
“Keeping him entertained while I was running late?”   
  
“I think he keeps himself entertained just fine. But I knew you were supposed to be here today and I asked him if he knew where you were,” she admitted. “He invited me to have a seat and started showing me some of his drawings. He’s quite talented.”  
  
“That he is.” John agreed.  
  
Elliot smiled but then pointed at John’s notebook hopefully.   
  
John sighed. For the past week he’d told Elliot there’d been no new dreams. This was a lie. There had been dreams. Well, just one dream repeated every time he slept. It was…terrifying and it always left him shaking and breathing heavy whenever he was able to wrench himself free. He wasn’t sure how long this was going to last so he figured he might as well get it over with and tell Elliot. Although, with Violet here, he wasn’t sure he wanted to.  
  
He noticed Violet peering at him curiously and realized she didn’t have any idea what was in the notebook. He rather lucked out with Elliot and knew not everyone would be as accepting of his bizarre dreams. Well, he supposed he had to tell her now.   
  
“I, ah, I have these dreams.” He stopped and glanced at her.  
  
Violet nodded encouragingly.   
  
“They’re quite strange. Um.” No, he was definitely not flustered. Not at all.  
  
Elliot rolled his eyes impatiently. Get on with it.   
  
“In them I’m an alien called the Doctor and I…I travel all across space.” He looked at her carefully, gauging her reaction. “And through time.”  
  
Violet’s eyebrows shot towards her hairline. She looked down at the journal. “A dream journal,” she realized.   
  
“I suppose so, yes.”  
  
“And they’re all the same?”   
  
John shook his head. “Well, yes and no. They happen all through space and time; so many different people and places and monsters. And there are all sorts of people travelling with him at different points but I’m always the Doctor. That never changes.”   
  
“Well, that’s weird,” she said matter-of-factly and his heart sank. She must’ve noticed his expression because she smiled at him reassuringly. “But a good kind of weird. …Can I see?”   
  
“Hmm? Oh.” He looked down at the notebook in his hands. “I suppose so.” He handed it over and she opened it, flipping through the pages. “It’s all out of order and I–I’m not a very good artist. Elliot makes me look like a toddler with crayons. Um.”  
  
Her eyes flitted across the pages, too quickly to be actually reading. She paused to look at each little drawing before flipping to the next page. There was something about the amazed curiosity on her face that made his heart beat a little faster. She thought it was weird but she wasn’t running away. She was actually interested. That was good, right?  
  
He noticed Elliot grinning wickedly and John frowned. Hang on a tick. Why exactly why had he invited Violet to sit with him? Not for the first time he wondered if Elliot actually could read minds. It was impossible, of course, but then, so were his dreams. Elliot certainly didn’t _act_ like a mind reader.  
  
 _Like you’d know what a mind reader acts like_ , he thought.   
  
Elliot saw him looking and the smile disappeared, though it seemed ready to reemerge any second.   
  
“Looks like a salt shaker.”   
  
“Pardon?” John leaned over and she tapped the picture in question. “Ah. That’s a Dalek. The Doctor’s mortal enemies.”  
  
Violet quirked an eyebrow and looked down at the metal creature. “Not much of a mortal enemy if you ask me.”  
  
Elliot shuddered and John shook his head. “That’s just the shell. Inside is a creature born to hate…whose only thought is to destroy everything and everyone that isn’t a Daek too.” He frowned slightly, wondering where that’d come from but knowing it to be true.   
  
He pointed to the whisk-like appendage protruding from the base. “That shoots out a laser that kills whatever it comes in contact with. Painfully. Death by extermination, not the way you want to go. And this other one has all sorts of functions and it’s the closest thing they have to a hand. No less deadly.”   
  
That sobered her a bit. “I see.”  
  
“But they’re all dead.” he added. “Most of them were killed in war–don’t know much about that war, though, I’m afraid. Just that it was bad. There’ve been a few that escaped that have popped up but they were dealt with.”  
  
Elliot rapped on the table with his knuckles to get their attention and held up the picture of a Dalek he’d drawn last week. Beside it, surrounded by a jagged speech bubble, was the word _EXTERMINATE_. He tapped just below his eye then pointed to the eyestalk.   
  
“That’s how it sees?”  
  
Elliot nodded.   
  
“But it’s not all monsters, you know.” John interrupted. Violet looked up at him. “There’s fun, too. And running. Lots of running. He saves worlds, the Doctor. Entire galaxies are safe because of him.”  
  
“He sounds like quite the hero.”  
  
John shrugged. “Madman, more like.”  
  
Elliot tapped the table again then pointed to the notebook insistently.   
  
“I think he wants you to read to him now.” Violet handed the notebook back to John and started to get up.  
  
“You don’t have to go.” He blurted out. “You can stay and listen.”   
  
This newest dream wasn’t…exactly something he was proud of but if she stayed he’d read one of the older ones. Elliot could deal with it for now.  
  
Violet shook her head. “No, I can’t. I need to get to my afternoon rounds. Maybe later?” she asked hopefully.  
  
“Okay.” He nodded. She beamed, waved goodbye, and walked out of the room.  
  
John watched her go. He heard a quiet, breathy sound, like a snigger. He heard it again. With a start, he realized Elliot was actually _laughing_.  
  
“You planned that.” he accused.  
  
The laughter subsided and Elliot’s mischievous expression morphed into one of pure innocence.  
  
John pointed at him sternly. “You’re not foolin’ me with that. I work with children for a living, you know.”  
  
Elliot grinned, glancing the way Violet had gone, and then wagged his eyebrows.  
  
“Oh, playing matchmaker, are we? Right, well if I catch you pointing heart-shaped arrows at anyone, you’re gonna get it.”  
  
The boy sniggered again.   
  
John shook his head at him although he was fighting laughter himself. Then with a sigh, he sobered. “Was it really that obvious?” Elliot nodded. “I suppose it’s pretty sad if I have to have a ten year old take charge of my romantic life.”  
  
He scrawled something in his notepad and held it up. _She likes you too._  
  
John arched one eyebrow. “And you know that for a fact, eh?”   
  
_Yes. Plus it’s kind of obvius._  
  
“You spelt obvious wrong.”  
  
Elliot rolled his eyes exasperatedly. _Whatever Casanova._  
  
“I’m hardly Casa–wait! How do you know who Casanova is?!” John sputtered. “You’re ten!”  
  
Elliot grinned broadly, showing off all his front teeth. Then he wrote: _Read now please._  
  
John sighed. “Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” he grumbled as he flipped to the newest entry in his journal. Unlike the others, this one had no accompanying pictures or added comments or notes. He hadn’t felt like it at the time.   
  
“This one isn’t…it isn’t like the others. It’s missing a lot and it’s…it’s incomplete. And it’s sad.” That was an understatement. He’d woken up in quite a state first time. He hadn’t cried like that since his mother passed away.   
  
John steeled himself then began to read. “‘There are these creatures chasing us. They’re telepathic parasites. When they’re in a familial unit of four like this lot, they’re called a ‘Family of Blood.’ Normally escaping into the Time Vortex would be enough to shake them but this Family was able to chase us through time with stolen technology.   
  
“They’re after me because I’m a Time Lord. If they possess me they’ll have enough power to live forever. Then they’ll travel across the stars causing chaos like few can imagine. Civilizations will fall. Planets will burn. Men, women, and children will be slaughtered without distinction. The last time it took an alliance between the Time Lords and another powerful, ancient race. That race is gone and I am the last Time Lord. If they take me there won’t be anyone left who can stop them.  
  
“We ran from them once and for a while it seemed to have worked but they found us again while we were in Cardiff, Wales. So many people died. Rose blames herself because she was the one who told us to run. There were…other options but she didn’t even want to consider them. I’ve tried to tell her it’s not her fault but I don’t think she’s listening. But she’s told me to do it. It’s our only option, like she said. But I don’t want to leave her…’” He trailed off.  
  
“I don’t know what it is that he did.” He added for Elliot’s sake. “Something to do with a watch, I couldn’t understand everything, it happened so fast.  
  
“‘I knew it was going to hurt so I sent Rose away. I didn’t want her to see. But she hasn’t come back. She always comes back, I don’ understand why she hasn’t this time. I know how much it hurts to watch someone you love in pain. I was trying to protect her. But she’s just gone. And now I’m alone.”  
  
John swallowed and closed his journal.   
  
Elliot blinked and then scowled in disappointment.   
  
“I told you it was incomplete,” he said quietly. “But it’s always the same, every single night for the past week. It never changes at all. Just running, a bit of talking, Rose crying, and pain and…darkness. And then Rose is gone and it hurts again.”  
  
He stopped talking, too upset to continue. He’d felt the Doctor’s loneliness and despair as if it were his own. The Doctor had fully expected Rose to come back and so, too, had John. He still was. Just thinking about it again made his heart clench in fear. Where _was_ she? Had something happened to her? Was she dead or merely detained? What if she never came back?  
  
But now Elliot was looking at him with a mixture of anger and confusion. Suddenly he felt judged. The kid had never once seemed to think he was mad or given any sign that he thought he was weird. The good, the bad, and just plain bizarre–he’d accepted the strange products of John’s mind and used it to fuel his own creativity. Now it seemed as if he was judging him.   
  
Was he right to? John was grieving for the Doctor’s loss as if it were his own. Except…  
  
Except it wasn’t. John was real. The Doctor was just a fictitious character, one of millions. His life wasn’t real. His pain wasn’t real because _it never happened._   
  
Well, that settled it. He’d let the dreams run their course and he’d continue to write them down but only for Elliot’s sake. He’d no longer get invested in them. And then once they stopped occurring he’d put them into the journal and let Elliot work his magic. Then he’d move on. The Doctor had his Rose.  
  
John had a certain blonde doctor. Maybe.   
  
He shook his head to clear it. “Well, I suppose that’s it. I’ve got to get back to work. I’ll see you tomorrow. Maybe I’ll finally have something new to write.”  
  
He felt Elliot’s eyes on him as he fled from the room.  
  


~*~

  
  
The next day John arrived on time and Violet was standing next to Elliot’s table. He barely faltered this time, taking her presence in stride, and smiled at them both. “Hello.”   
  
“Good afternoon.” Violet smiled at him. “It’s later and I have the next half an hour or so free and Elliot already said I could stay. If you don’t mind, that is.”  
  
John realized what she was asking and grinned right back at her. “No, I don’t mind! Great!”  
  
It was as if telling Elliot had been the catalyst for triggering new dreams. It was unusual but then it was the first time he hadn’t gone to Elliot immediately with a new dream since he began sharing. Last night’s dream was one of the few he’d had that didn’t feature Rose as the Doctor’s travelling companion and he got the feeling that this was one of those that predated her, not one that occurred after she hadn’t come back.   
  
The two of them took their seats and John slid a sly glance in Elliot’s direction. The would-be Cupid winked.   
  
“Alright, let’s see what you drew.”   
  
Elliot shook his head and waved him off.   
  
“Don’t be shy,” Violet said.   
  
Elliot gave her an annoyed look that clearly said _I’m not._  
  
“Do you…not want to show her?” John tried.   
  
He sighed, rolling his eyes, and flipped open the sketchbook to a blank page and held it up. John looked at it for a few seconds. “I don’t see anything. Did you…not draw anything?”  
  
He shook his head.  
  
“Oh. Well, that’s new. …I suppose there really wasn’t much to draw, was there?”   
  
He shook his head again, sadly this time. John wondered if he’d been wrong yesterday. Maybe he hadn’t been silently ridiculing John and he’d just been upset at the new development or that he didn’t get a very interesting story after waiting for a week. That still wouldn’t change his mind, though. John had thought about it more throughout the evening and decided it really would be best for him to make an effort to separate dreams from reality.   
  
“We’re in luck, Elliot. I’ve got a new one today.” _And about time, too_ , he added silently. “It’s…well it’s a strange one. The Doctor’s got three traveling with him and one of them is a Time Lord! Or, well, Time _Lady_ I should say.”  
  
Elliot’s jaw dropped. The significance was lost on Violet who didn’t even know what a Time Lord was, much less that the Doctor was the last one (at least by the time he began traveling with Rose).   
  
“Susan, he calls her, though I don’t think that’s her real name. Not very Time Lord-y, Susan, you know? Oh, and this is the best bit: she calls him Grandfather.” He grinned. Elliot’s brow furrowed. “Don’t look like that, Elliot. He’s over nine hundred and you think he never got married or anything?”  
  
That didn’t seem to help him. John bit back a sigh. This was one of those times when he wished he would talk. He had no idea what was throwing the kid off. Maybe he didn’t know where babies came from? Nah. No way he knew who _Casanova_ was but hadn’t gotten wind of the birds and the bees yet.  
  
Violet listened patiently as John told of their encounter with the Aztecs and how one of the human companions had been mistaken for a goddess. His eyes kept flicking up to her face as he read and he wouldn’t deny that he enjoyed the bright curiosity in her eyes. She interrupted him twice to ask questions but other than that she remained silent during the whole thing. Elliot started sketching midway through and by the time John was explaining how the four of them escaped back into the tomb where the TARDIS was waiting, he was finished with his drawing.  
  
Elliot turned his sketchpad around, smiling proudly. It was a woman’s slender arm with a gleaming snake-shaped bracer wrapped around it.   
  
Violet lifted a single, delicate eyebrow. “That’s…very good. Not quite how I imagined, but–”  
  
“But that’s how it looked.” John informed her. “In my dream, I mean. All those drawings you saw–they’re are exact in every detail.”  
  
“Get out.”  
  
He grinned jovially. “I’m serious. I don’t even help him. He just does it.”  
  
“How does he–” She looked down at boy. “How did you do that?”  
  
Elliot just smiled mysteriously and shrugged his shoulders. She stared at him strangely for a long minute then, shaking her head quickly, she smiled once again. “Can I see some more? I’ve still got–” she glanced at the clock “–a good ten minutes before I have to leave.”  
  
He nodded and flipped the pages back until he reached the first one he’d drawn on the first day: the blue box.  
  
“That’s the Doctor’s ship,” John said.  
  
“Doesn’t look like much.”  
  
“It’s bigger on the inside.”  
  
“How is that possible?”   
  
“Something about different dimensions, I think. I’ve never dreamed all the details,” he admitted. “I just know it’s bigger on the inside and the control room and console look different sometimes. And you know what else?” He paused for effect. “Its entirely sentient and telepathic. Can’t communicate with words, just images and colors and emotions. Sometimes the lights will flicker or the hum of the systems will fluctuate. It’s got a whole vocabulary made with that.”  
  
She leaned forward, squinting. “Does that say…‘Police Public Call Box’ on the top?”  
  
“Ah, that it does.”  
  
“What’s–?”  
  
“Back in the 1950’s, before mobile phones were invented, Britain used to have Police Boxes on the street corners . If you needed help you could phone for help in there. Or if they arrested somebody they’d lock ‘em inside until a car came to pick ‘em up. I’m…not sure why his ship looks like that but it ever changes.”  
  
Elliot pulled the sketchpad back and flipped through the pages before turning it back around.   
  
“Oh, that’s K-9, the Doctor’s robot dog. He’s only been around once so far but he’s very smart–he’s basically a supercomputer–and his voice is adorable.”  
  
Violet lifted her head in surprise. “It speaks?”   
  
“‘Course he does! What’d you expect? Barking? Not much use that’d be.”  
  
She looked at him like she thought he was half mad but laughed anyway.   
  
Elliot showed off a few of the villains–Cybermen, a Slitheen, a Zygon–and John explained each of them as best he could. Then the sketch of Captain Jack (“Oooh, He’s handsome.”) followed by the sketch of Rose, smirking up at them like she knew the answers to all their questions.   
  
John sighed inwardly, cursing his sleeping mind for making Rose so pretty and Elliot for showing her to Violet.  
  
“Oh,” she murmured. Violet looked at the drawing of Rose for a long time, her eyes taking in all the little details. “For all the monsters and aliens you come up with, you can imagine some very pretty girls.”  
  
He shrugged, resisting the urge to rub the back of his neck.   
  
Elliot tapped the flower in her hair. Violet peered closer. “Is that a rose?”  
  
“Her name’s Rose,” John explained. “She’s one of the Doctor’s companions but she’s appeared more often than the others. Cheeky, that one.”   
  
Elliot turned the page. The Bad Wolf stared at them dangerously from the doorway of the box, light building in her outstretched hand, ready to annihilate the Daleks for their crimes. For threatening her Doctor and killing the Captain.   
  
“Is she an alien?”  
  
“No. She’s very human. Except here she’s the Bad Wolf.”  
  
“‘The Bad Wolf’?” Violet smirked. “You know there’s a bar down on 9th called that?”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“You didn’t know?”  
  
“I’m still new here. I guess I must’ve seen it once and forgotten.” Though John wasn’t too sure about that. The name Bad Wolf just seemed too _right_ for her. More than just something left floating around in his subconscious from his walk around town when he first arrived.   
  
“So what’s the Bad Wolf?”  
  
“An entire army of Daleks were secretly controlling Earth. The Doctor, Rose, and Captain Jack got pulled into the mess to help defeat them. But it wasn’t looking good. There was a way to beat the Daleks but doing so would wipe out the Earth as well. The Doctor knew they would probably die as well so he sent her away in the ship to protect her. But she wouldn’t have it. She ripped open the ship and looked into its heart, joined minds with it, and swallowed the Time Vortex and all its power. Together they became the Bad Wolf.  
  
“All the power of time in the hands of a twenty-year-old shop girl from the East End.” He shook his head. “She killed them all. The entire Dalek fleet turned to dust in seconds. But the human mind isn’t designed to hold that kind of power. It should’ve killed her but the Doctor took it from her and healed her at the cost of one of his lives.”  
  
Elliot rapped lightly on the table to get their attention. He’d turned to a new drawing when they weren’t paying attention. It was the one of three Daleks staring at the Bad Wolf. He turned the page again and it showed the same Daleks being turned to dust.  
  
“And she did that?” Violet asked.  
  
“Oh yes.”  
  
“Wow,” she murmured. Violet, for her part, was awed and somewhat intimidated. For this Rose girl to have been prepared to give her life and absorb that kind of power for the Doctor, she must have loved him dearly. She wondered if that was a reflection of something John secretly desired–a woman who’d give her life to save him–or was just something his imagination had come up with.   
  
Elliot turned to another drawing he’d done of Rose. This time she was wearing a tank top and fuzzy pants, her hair pulled up into a messy ponytail, while lounging on a very squishy couch with a book propped up on her legs. She couldn’t be one hundred percent sure but she thought the title might’ve been _Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince_. She nearly laughed. What if that turned out to be one of the actual book titles? That would just beat all.   
  
“She keeps coming back,” John mused to himself.  
  
Violet looked away from the imaginary girl. “Pardon?”  
  
“Rose, she always comes back. He warns her it’s too dangerous but she doesn’t leave. She gets lost, she finds him again–or he finds her. He sends her away to keep her safe and she comes right back each and every time to face the danger with him. Except…for this last time. They were being chased by these creatures, these um–these hunters and he sent her away again for some reason–I don’t know why, the dream was just a bunch of fragments and sounds–but she hasn’t come back. He’s all alone now and he’s waiting for her but she’s….”   
  
He trailed off sounding pained and somewhat lost. It occurred to Violet that maybe John felt an acute attachment to these characters of his since he seemed to experience it all as if he were having the adventures and feeling these emotions. Violet looked down at the girl on the paper again and felt a pang of anger. She obviously loved the Doctor very much if she would go through all that to save him. So why had she suddenly left him?   
  
She shook her head quickly. _Just a story. No need to get overly emotional about it._  
  
Still, she couldn’t help but wish Rose would find her way back to the Doctor, if only to put John’s mind at ease.  
  
Elliot showed her one last drawing, this time it was the Doctor’s special tool: the sonic screwdriver. According to John, the little thingamabob was capable of emitting thousands of different sonic frequencies that each had a specific function. From opening locks to making ATMs dispense cash without a card.   
  
She started to say goodbye to them both but John asked if he could walk with her for a little bit.   
  
Violet smiled, her cheeks warming. “Sure.”  
  
John told Elliot goodbye and if the kid was upset that he was leaving early, he didn’t show it. But, then, Elliot didn’t show much emotion anyway. In fact, the only other person besides John who’d ever been able to get any real response from him had been Macy Clearwater. The last time the little girl had visited him, Violet swore she’d seen Elliot laugh but hadn’t been close enough to hear to confirm. Even if it hadn’t been a laugh, the look of delight on his face was a miracle in itself. She hadn’t seen him laugh with John yet but the amount of smiles certainly made up for it.  
  
She wasn’t going to say it out loud in case it jinxed it, but Violet couldn’t help but wonder if John would be the one to get Elliot past whatever issues he was going through (besides leukemia) that had caused this perpetual silence of his.   
  
She and John walked side by side down the hall in silence for a few moments. “You’re very good with him,” she said.  
  
“Well…” He smiled the tiniest bit. “I understand him.”  
  
“How did you do it? He’s not my patient but Jasmine used to talk about him in the staff room. Apparently he used to be a chatterbox but when he arrived this time he was as silent as the grave. Nothing anyone said or did got through to him until you came along.”  
  
“Maybe it’s because I did something none of you did. I listened to him.” He looked at her and she was surprised at the amount of emotion gleaming in those brown irises. “It was all there, waiting for someone to notice. The silence alone spoke volumes. The first time I asked about him, Jasmine told me he used to talk everyone’s ears off, so I wondered why such a talkative little boy would suddenly be mute. Answer me this, Miss Lewis: why do we talk?”  
  
“To communicate.”  
  
They were at the men’s locker room now. Instead of going inside, he turned to face her fully. He nodded encouragingly. “Keep going.”  
  
Violet looked at the ceiling as she considered the question. “We talk to share our opinions with people, to make ourselves understood, or to explain things.”  
  
“And what do we expect to happen when we speak to people?”  
  
“We…expect them to listen to us.”  
  
“Exactly. And if no one was going to listen to you, would you bother speaking?”  
  
She said nothing.  
  
“Even if it isn’t in your nature to allow yourself to be ignored, wouldn’t you eventually realize the futility and give up? Fall silent?”  
  
Realization dawned on her and she widened her eyes.   
  
He could tell she understood. Nodding, he closed his eyes briefly. “He felt ignored by someone. His parents, I think. In fact I’m almost certain. I’ve seen them interact and they don’t seem very pleased with his silence. And he clams up when they’re around.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“Elliot is very expressive.”   
  
She frowned skeptically.   
  
“He is! He speaks with his body. Everything from the way he looks at you to how tight he holds the pencils when he’s drawing means something. It’s just a matter of understanding it.”  
  
“And you do.”  
  
“Well, I don’t mean to boast, but…” He glanced at his watch. “Oh, excuse me for one moment.”   
  
He opened the door to the locker room and disappeared inside. Violet leaned against the wall to wait. She didn’t have long before she was due at Robert Carter’s appointment but she was willing to make them wait a few minutes if it meant she got to hear John’s theories on Elliot. And spend a few more minutes with him.   
  
John reemerged a minute later without his notebook and smiled. Violet returned the smile and set off in the direction of the clinic. John followed. “Where were we?”  
  
“You said he clams up?”  
  
“Oh, right. Yes, he does. Whenever they try talking to him he’s very stiff, with shoulders hunched, sometimes his head’s tucked. He hardly looks at them and when he does he usually only stares. They bought him that little notepad he has so he can write out what he wants to say but he never uses it with them.”  
  
“Does he for you?” she asked. “He did for me yesterday. Once.”  
  
“Yes. If it’s something he really wants me to know but can’t convey with gestures. He does it for Macy, too. But his parents: no. He doesn’t even try to communicate with them. His posture is always very drawn in, reserved, or, hell, maybe even _defeated_. Like he’s given up completely. So, yes, I am fairly certain they have a lot to do with their son being mute.”  
  
Violet frowned at the dark thoughts suddenly swirling through her mind. “Do you think they might’ve abused him?”  
  
John was quiet for a minute. He looked straight ahead, eyes distant. The longer he remained silent the more her anxiety grew. Oh, she hoped that wasn’t it. She really hoped. But if so, the line to give them hell started behind her.   
  
John sighed and shook his head. “Not in the way you’re thinking. They don’t seem like the abusive type and from what I’ve seen they’re not actually cruel to him. They’re just your typical worried cancer patient parents. But they do seem to be disregarding his mental health problems. This kind of muteness is usually the result of some form of trauma or depression. For Elliot, I think it’s the latter based on the way he reacted to Macy’s departure.  
  
“His parents care for him but they’re insensitive to his mental needs. I guess they’re too focused on the physical ones. They tell him to talk instead of taking the time to realize that his silence is actually him screaming a thousand words at the top of his lungs. He stopped talking because he felt he wasn’t being listened to. Why? What was he saying that they didn’t seem to hear? What were they saying? What did they do? What should they have done? But they don’t understand him.”   
  
Violet stared at him in amazement. “You–I– _how_? How can you know all of this?”  
  
“Easy: I observed them. Everything I told you I’ve deduced simply by watching, asking around, and applying logic. When I realized what was going on, I also realized how completely obvious it was.”  
  
“Not to the rest of us.”  
  
“Like I said.”  
  
“Well, he’s not even my patient, nor is he Jasmine’s only patient. She can’t devote that kind of time to him. I’m surprised you could.”  
  
“I didn’t need to. Everything I’ve learned about Elliot happened during the times I’ve read to him and the other times I saw him or his parents while I was doing rounds.”  
  
They’d arrived at her clinic now. She turned to face him and searched his face carefully. She didn’t understand how he could’ve deduced all that in such a short time but he seemed completely confident. He must be very smart. Top of his class probably.   
  
“You should tell all of this to Jasmine,” she said. “Maybe she can do something about it.  
  
“I should, shouldn’t I?” He frowned ever so slightly. “I’m just worried something will happen to break Elliot’s trust in me.”  
  
“I don’t think that’s possible. You’re a great guy.”   
  
John’s entire face lit up and he stood a little straighter. Violet smiled to herself. “Violet…you know the town better than me. That Olive Garden on St. Charles Ave–is it any good?”  
  
Oh my God. Was he asking her on a date? “I don’t know,” she admitted, trying to ignore the sudden fluttering in her stomach. “I’ve never eaten there.”  
  
“Well, then, would you like to find out? Say, around seven?”  
  
Violet beamed. “I’d love to.”  
  
“Should we meet there? I don’t have a car so I use the bus system to get around. I’m not a very good driver, anyway.”  
  
“Well how about I pick you up, instead?”  
  
“That doesn’t seem proper.” But he was smiling.  
  
“Yeah, well, who cares? It’s not like we’ve got to worry about impressing my parents.”   
  
John laughed and plucked a piece of paper and a pen off the nearby reception desk and scrawled his address down. He handed it to her and she tucked it carefully into her pocket. “Well, then, John Smith, I’ll see you at seven.”  
  
“It’s a date.”  
  
So absorbed in each other, neither of them noticed the British medical student standing a few feet away listening to every word.


	41. Keeping Secrets

  
Martha had been the mediator in her family for a long time, perpetually stuck between the quarrelling parties. She got involved only when one side asked for her help but never pledged allegiance to one in particular. When she realized this would become a permanent arrangement, one of the very first lessons she’d learned was that sometimes it was best for all if she played dumb when it came to knowledge of each side’s actions. If confronted directly she wouldn’t lie–concealing information for one side would be seen a showing preference towards them. If she wasn’t, she never brought up unless it was necessary.   
  
And she didn’t feel it necessary for Rose to know of this latest development. So whenever she asked how John was doing, Martha would tell her the usual–happy, fine, still no sideburns but no tattoo either, and no dark circles under his eyes unless it was the morning after he’d been on call–but she never breathed a word about Violet Lewis.   
  
For one, she wasn’t sure how Rose would react. For another, she wasn’t sure how to even break it to her. It was hardly like the loss of sideburns. This would break her heart. It might blow up in her face later but for now Martha was just going to keep this from her. At least Rose always text her before she went looking for John and would stay put if Martha told her he wasn’t somewhere she could go. It was risky but it was the only thing she had. She just hoped Rose didn’t go looking for him one day and see John and Violet together.  
  
Martha considered intervening herself but she couldn’t think of a way that didn’t run a serious risk of ending poorly. She didn’t want John to distance himself from her, or worse, have her moved to a new team. The whole point of her going undercover as a med-student was so that she could monitor, and if need be, guard him. That wouldn’t work if he wouldn’t let her within twenty feet of him.   
  
There was nothing she could do unless the Family suddenly showed up and used Violet to get to him. Not that she wanted that. But Violet wasn’t a threat, not the kind that Martha could deal with, anyway.   
  
_But what’s going to happen in four weeks when we’re ready to take off?_ She wondered one afternoon as she watched them talking at one of the tables in the break room. Violet was telling a story, gesturing lightly with her hands, and John was grinning down at her. And damn if Martha didn’t recognize that expression. That was how the Doctor looked at Rose whenever she was saying something funny. Lately a lot of John’s expressions had been mirroring the ones the Doctor used for things related to Rose.  
  
John was falling hard and fast and she thought Violet might be as well. In less than month they would be opening the fob watch and the Doctor would replace John permanently. Poor Violet would be left alone and heartbroken. Unless Rose opted not to open the watch but Martha couldn’t see her doing that. Rose might be a kind person but when it came to the Doctor, all bets were off. Plus they’d both be stranded here if the Doctor didn’t come back and Martha wouldn’t let that happen.  
  
When Violet left to make her rounds, Martha approached John.  
  
“Things seem to be going well.”  
  
John grinned. “They are.”  
  
“So are you official, then?”  
  
He gave her a funny look. “Is this high school?”  
  
“Well…” She sat down in the chair Violet had vacated and gestured with her hand across the room. “Take a look. You’ve got your jocks–” she gestured to two doctors who were discussing the upcoming baseball season “–your nerds and band geeks–” she pointed towards Dr. Jordan who was considered by all to be the smartest man in the hospital, sitting at the table reading a book, and then to the student at the table with him who was listening to an mp3 player and drumming his hands on the table “–bookies, techno geeks, drama geeks, and your typical blondes.” She gestured to a few more groups of people around the room and then turned back to him with a triumphant smirk.   
  
“So yes.”  
  
John chortled. “Just for that. Yes, I suppose we are.”   
  
She propped her chin on her fist and tried not to seem overly curious. “What number you on?”  
  
“Of?”  
  
“Dates.”  
  
“Third. We’re going to be visiting a place on 9th called The Bad Wolf. She says her sister works there.”  
  
Martha went completely still, eyes widening the tiniest bit, but she blinked quickly to cover it. Those three words followed Rose and the Doctor throughout time and space as both a sign and warning. It wasn’t the first time she’d spotted them while traveling with them. Violet’s sister working there could just be a coincidence but Martha wasn’t too sure. And equally worrisome was how steady the two of them were getting. It’d been a week since she’d first heard him ask her out and with their schedules, two dates was a lot. Probably one every night they both had off.   
  
“Have you gotten her anything yet?”  
  
He frowned worriedly. “Should I have?”  
  
“Eh.” She waved a hand dismissively. She wasn’t going to interfere but that didn’t mean she had to _help_.   
  
“What do you think she’d like?”  
  
 _Bollocks,_ she thought grumpily. She arched an eyebrow. “Why’re you asking me?”  
  
“Because you’re a woman.”   
  
“Are you saying all women like the same things?”  
  
“Er, no?”  
  
“Hmmm.” She considered him with narrowed eyes for a moment. “Either way, I don’t think I can help. I don’t know her well enough to make that kind of call. You could try flowers–not violets, though, a lot of women with flower names don’t like it. Some bloke tried give Rose a rose one time. She wasn’t amused.”   
  
John blinked in surprise. “Rose?”   
  
Oh no. Not good. Rose had made it quite clear that she wasn’t to mention her at all around John. “Um.”  
  
“You have a friend named Rose?”  
  
“Yeah…”  
  
He seemed to consider something for a minute. “What does she look like?” he asked.  
  
“She’s, um. She’s really tall, green eyes, red hair. Lots of freckles. Irish,” she added with a wry smile.  
  
John actually looked disappointed for a moment before his expression brightened. “Well, I guess it is pretty cliché.”  
  
“But, um, there’s a flower shop two blocks from here. You could see if they have any variety bouquets.”  
  
“That’s a great idea. Thank you,” he said empathetically. “I’m not very good with this kind of stuff.”  
  
“Don’t I know it,” she grumbled.   
  
“What?”  
  
“Nothing. I gotta get back to work. See you later, Mr. Smith.”   
  
It was only after she left that she realized she’d ended up helping after all.   
  
The next day Violet found him in the early morning while he was talking with Martha’s group before they went to do their morning rounds. Her eyes shown with delight as she greeted him and John’s answering smile made the sun look dim. He excused himself momentarily to talk with her outside and Martha watched them go with a heavy heart. Her peers whispered excitedly amongst themselves about the new couple and she focused on keeping her breakfast in her stomach.  
  
Rose got off work before her that afternoon and they didn’t have anything planned, so instead of going straight back to the flat after her shift, Martha decided to make a stop at the TARDIS. The Doctor had left behind instructions in the form of a video, no doubt recorded while they’d been in the infirmary. Rose was the only one who’d seen it all the way through more than once (she probably had the bloody thing memorized) and Martha couldn’t remember if he’d included what to do in a situation like this. And since she couldn’t ask Rose without giving it all away, the only thing to do was re-watch the video herself.  
  
She took the bus to the street where the TARDIS was parked, only about a mile from the hospital, and walked the rest of the way. She pulled her key from her bag (dangling jewelry wasn’t permitted while she was working) as she approached the familiar blue box nestled in the alley behind the only Italian restaurant in town.   
  
“There’s my favorite Martian!”   
  
Martha jumped in surprise. She relaxed when recognized the familiar twang of Marc, the sole resident of the alley, at least before the TARDIS dropped in on him. He peered out from behind the blue box. He was African American, somewhere in his thirties, with hair shorn close to his scalp, and a goatee surrounding a jovial smile. Today he was wearing the thick brown jacket they’d procured from the wardrobe for him, a pair of old jeans, and his usual black sneakers.   
  
They didn’t know about him until their fourth time exiting the TARDIS. Apparently he’d seen the whole thing. The TARDIS materializing over the spot where he usually slept, the emergence of the strange man in the brown suit who hadn’t seemed to notice anything around him, followed by the two of them a few minutes later. He’d hidden from them that day and during their subsequent visits. The fourth time, however, he’d confronted them.   
  
By that point he’d come to the conclusion the TARDIS was an alien ship or something in disguise and that they were visitors from another world. After seeing the state of John Smith when he came out of the ship, he was convinced he needed to protect his planet, but no one was gonna believe him about aliens unless he had proof. So he’d waited until they were away from the TARDIS and cornered them with a knife. In her terror, Rose’s eyes had turned gold. He’d taken that as a sign he was right and started going on about disguised space ships and signals sent into space in the 1960s.   
  
Rose, however, had had enough of the knife pointed at her. Martha had seen Rose’s eyes glow before but never had she ever seen her provoked while in that state. The only warning she provided was “Get away!” with a strange echo underneath her voice. When Marc failed to do so, she’d brought her hand up so fast Martha barely saw her move, grabbing his wrist, and squeezed. The man hadn’t been able to pull away and was forced to let go of the knife. She’d kicked the knife towards Martha then swung him around, slammed the poor bastard against the wall, and pinned him there with an arm against his throat. He’d been close enough that he had no choice but to look her in the eye. Whatever he saw was enough to make him beg for his life.  
  
Rose backed away and Martha held the knife up defensively. They couldn’t call the police since they didn’t have proper identities established yet and they didn’t want anyone touching the TARDIS. The man wasn’t stupid enough to try and run. The only thing left was to talk. He repeated everything he’d said before but they were able to focus on more than being trapped at knifepoint. Now more understanding of his motives, Rose calmed down and actually seemed surprised at what she’d done before.  
  
It took a bit of work, but they managed to convince the man that they weren’t evil invaders planning on destroying Earth, but were actually frequently responsible for protecting it. Although no amount of talking could convince him they weren’t aliens, especially after what Rose had done. He did, however, believe that the man he’d seen before was their human companion who was suffering from “mental trauma caused by exposure to an alien toxin” and that they’d decided to wait out the effects in a safe and familiar environment.   
  
They told him there was no way they could move the ship to another alley, so he’d agreed to keep an eye on her while they were away. Not that anyone ever came down here except him and restaurant employees at this time of year. Bridgeton didn’t have any real gangs to speak of and most of the homeless people opted to spend their nights in the shelters. Not Marc.   
  
“I’ve told you I’m not a Martian. What are you doing back there, anyway?” she asked.   
  
“Reading,” he replied promptly. “But I heard you coming.” He emerged from behind the TARDIS fully and leaned against the side of it. “I been sleepin’ back there. This beauty blocks a lot of the wind and she’s warm.”  
  
“She likes you.”  
  
They’d explained to Marc weeks ago that she was sentient. He’d taken it pretty well, all things considering. He confessed to Martha that it felt like having a guard dog with him at all times. “Did she tell you that?”  
  
“I can’t really talk to her, not like Rose can. But she shouldn’t feel warm right now since she’s sleeping. She’s doing it for you.”   
  
Marc smiled. “Aight then. Don’t let me hold ya up. Just don’t be doin’ no anal probing or whatever.”  
  
Her eyes flipped wide and the key nearly slipped from her fingers. Marc laughed. “I’m just funnin’ with ya!”  
  
She laughed halfheartedly. He winked backed towards the rear of the ship, knowing full well she wouldn’t open it with him watching.   
  
She slid the key into the lock, pushing the door open just wide enough to fit through, then slipped inside. The TARDIS didn’t hum in welcome, too dormant to do more than raise her lights but it was enough to remind Martha that she wasn’t alone.  
  
“Hello,” she greeted softly.   
  
The TARDIS did not respond. Sighing heavily, Martha made her way up to the console, brushing her fingers along the edge as she circled around to the controls to start up the required systems. The console hummed to life as she headed around to the monitor. She pressed the buttons to bring up the video and the monitor flickered to life.   
  
_The Doctor appeared on screen, sitting down in front of the camera. “Is this working?” He tapped the camera. “Rose, Martha, before I change here’s a list of instructions for when I’m human. One: don’t let me hurt anyone. We can’t have that but you know what humans are like.”_  
  
“And so do you now,” she murmured.  
  
 _“Two: don’t worry about the TARDIS. I’ll put it on emergency power so they can’t detect it. Make sure you don’t turn on any of the other systems or it might attract attention. Four–no, wait a minute–three: no getting involved in big historical events. Four: you. Don’t let me abandon either of you. Stay together even if I, Rassilon forbid, try to split you apart.”  
  
Something seemed to occur to him and his expression hardened. “And five–very important, five: don’t let me eat pears! I **hate** pairs. John Smith is a character I made up but I won’t know that. I’ll think I am him and he might do something stupid like eat a pear. In three months I don’t want to wake up from being human and taste **that**.” _  
  
Martha rolled her eyes. Like she would’ve been able to stop him after he’d already accepted the pear from his student or put it on his plate. He hadn’t seemed to mind the taste, though–in fact the repeated consumption seemed to indicate that he enjoyed them–which made her wonder why the Doctor disliked them enough that they earned a special mention in the official rules and guidelines.   
  
He continued to talk for five minutes, discussing everything from what to do to establish identities if they landed in certain eras to what things they must never let John do. Getting a tattoo was on that list. Thankfully, shaving facial hair was not. Good thing, too, because she’d pretty much botched up the pear thing. Maybe she’d get lucky and he wouldn’t remember. The video finished with him telling them to open the watch if things went wrong or they were discovered and not a moment before or else he would come back and the Family could find them.  
  
He smiled at the camera for a moment and she knew from the raw emotion in his eyes that it was not meant for her. But she still could take comfort from it.   
  
When the video had faded away back to the desktop display, she walked over to the pilot’s seat and sank onto it. Propping her elbows on her legs, she hid her face in her hands. He hadn’t even gone near the subject of what to do if his human counterpart fell in love with a native. Maybe he thought he would love Rose. Maybe he couldn’t imagine falling in love with another. Martha didn’t know.   
  
She was on her own.   
  
She wasn’t feeling up to going back to the flat just yet. She couldn’t face Rose again knowing John Smith and Violet Lewis would be dining and drinking at The Bad Wolf that evening without some sort of plan. So she slid off the seat and headed out of the console room down the single hallway out of hundreds that remained accessible. Each of the ten doors contained a room that had been deemed useful or necessary by the ship and always they always found the same room behind the same door. Her room was always behind the third door on the left. Martha actually missed the inconsistency.   
  
The other rooms included the kitchen, library, Rose’s bedroom, the Doctor’s bedroom, the wardrobe, a cupboard, a storeroom of various devices, something called the Zero Room, and, strangely, a karaoke bar. They saw the potential uses for all of them except that last one. Why the TARDIS thought a karaoke bar was necessary was absolutely beyond either of them. Unless she thought they might get bored and decide the only way to entertain themselves was singing the Ancient North Martian equivalent of _Happy Birthday._  
  
She went into the second door on the left: the kitchen. The room flickered to life–booted up, almost–when she entered. She pulled out a skillet and set it on the stove to heat up, and pulled a package of rice and an onion from the cabinets, some broccoli and soy sauce from the fridge, and chicken from the freezer. As she prepared the stir-fry she thought about John and Violet. Then just about John, who was so much like the Doctor and yet so different.   
  
Then she thought about Violet.   
  
Facts, that’s what she needed. Martha was logic and reason. Facts could be sorted and analyzed and with the right mind, turned into salvation or damnation. What did she know about Dr. Lewis?   
  
Physically, she was only a little taller than Martha. Blonde–natural, if her eyebrows were to believed. Green eyes. Not very muscled. Built for running but didn’t appear to have the experience.   
  
Mentally, she was obviously sharp. She’d made it through med school, after all. Beyond that Martha didn’t know much.   
  
Emotionally, she was…kind. There wasn’t another word for it. She was well and truly kind. If Martha were less experienced, she’d say there wasn’t a malicious bone in that woman’s body, but she’d seen too much of the universe to believe that about anyone over the age of two. But that malicious bone was hidden deep inside, underneath layers of compassion and understanding and acceptance.   
  
“Oh my God,” she breathed and very nearly dropped the wooden spoon.   
  
God, she’d been blind. It should’ve been obvious back at physical. Medium height, blonde, built for running. Dark green eyes that could probably be mistaken for brown in dim lighting. Add in her personality, overlook the different backgrounds, and the resemblance is so obvious that even a blind man would see. Even their _names_ were similar.   
  
Violet Lewis.   
  
Rose Tyler.   
  
One loved the Doctor with all her heart. The other was on the way there with his counterpart. Put them in a room together and they’d either be the best of friends or hate each other.   
  
_God, we were stupid._  
  
Rose, so adamant about refusing John that she failed so see how much of the Doctor was in him; that even a fragment of someone who adored her as much as the Doctor did would long for her. Without the real thing to fill the void, the fragment had subconsciously sought out the next best thing and it had found Dr. Lewis. Hell, the name Lewis was a joke between the Doctor and Rose.   
  
And Martha, so concerned about making things easier for her friend that she failed to spot the flaws in their plan until it was too late. Now that things made much more sense they were actually so much worse.   
  
She carried a paper plate loaded with stir-fry in one hand and a cup of her best tea in the other. It took a bit of wiggling but she managed to get her bag over her arm again and nudge the door open with her hip. She kicked it shut with her foot then called for Marc. He emerged from behind the TARDIS a few seconds later and his eyes immediately zeroed in on the plate of food. They’d brought him out food before–cans of things, boxes of crackers and crisps, some fruit, but never a hot meal like this.  
  
“I hope you like stir-fry,” she said with a smile.  
  
His jaw dropped and he pointed to himself hesitantly.   
  
“Yes, you. Or is there another bum hiding back there I’m not aware about?”  
  
He zipped up to her and snatched the plate with a quick, “Thank you!” before he picked up the fork and tucked in. He sat down in front of the TARDIS, leaning against the door as he ate, and she held out the cup to him. He accepted it as well, glancing briefly at the contents before taking a sip.   
  
“And it’s all Earth food, in case you’re wondering. Except for the tea. That’s from 16th century Manati.”  
  
“That where you’re from?” he asked with his mouth full.   
  
She shook her head. Marc glanced up at her, eyes searching, and swallowed. “What’s wrong?”  
  
“What makes you think something’s wrong?”  
  
“You look sad, E.T. You didn’t earlier. Worried. But not sad. What changed?”  
  
Martha sighed and sank to the ground next to him. Pulling her knees to her chest, she told him an abbreviated version of what was happening.   
  
“Is that really so bad?” he asked. “If he’s gonna be happy with her. Or do you not want him to leave? …Can he _not_ leave?”  
  
“No, he can, it’s just… Rose loves him. She loves him with all her heart and she can’t bear to see him like this so she’s stayed away. She hasn’t even let him see her because he isn’t the man she fell in love with and she doesn’t want to risk falling for this new man only to lose him when the old one reemerges.”  
  
“And he will reemerge.”  
  
“Probably. There’s an…antidote that we can administer at the end of the third month. If we don’t then he’ll stay as he is. But I can’t see that happening.”  
  
“And when the old him comes back will he–?”  
  
“Oh yes. They love each other so much that sometimes it’s hard to look at them because you can’t help be envious. You see the way he looks at her and you want someone to look at you the same way but you can’t help but wonder if it’ll ever measure up. And John as he is now is different but he’s so much like he was before. He’s falling for Violet the same way he fell for Rose and in the end someone’s going to have to make the decision and at least one heart is going to be broken. Possibly beyond repair.”   
  
Marc didn’t seem to know what to say.  
  
“And the worst part is that we could’ve prevented this. He’s someone else but there’s so much of his old self there that sometimes I forget who I’m talking to. I fully believe that if he met her now, even if he didn’t remember, that he’d fall in love with her. He must’ve been missing her this whole time without even realizing it and he found someone similar to her to fill the hole she should’ve.”  
  
“He’s a shadow of himself so he done found a shadow of her to love. Kinda poetic.”  
  
“Poetic. Yeah. That’s one word for it.”  
  
“Lots of poems are sad.” He took another bite of the stir-fry and chewed slowly. “You got yourself in a hot mess, Mar.”   
  
Martha smiled at the nickname they’d come up with a few weeks back. It was so silly but she kind of liked it. “Don’t I know it, Mar.”  
  
If a year ago someone told her that she’d be sitting in an alley the past, pouring out her troubles to a homeless man who thought she was an alien, she’d have laughed in their face and had them sectioned. Yet here she was. Before her travels she wouldn’t have considered someone like Marc able to help her. He was homeless, after all. He must’ve done something wrong. Brought it on himself somehow. But after witnessing the genius and ingenuity of the people from Hooverville, hearing their stories, and learning that sometimes things like this were just beyond your control, she understood how wrong she’d been. It wasn’t her fault. It was just how she’d been raised. It took being with the Doctor to open her eyes and her mind.   
  
And here she was with Marc, a homeless man, and the only one who would or even could listen.   
  
“Could she leave him?” he asked. “Rose, I mean.”  
  
Martha shook her head. “Her father’s dead and her mother and her closest friend are somewhere we can’t ever go. All her other friends and family, like mine, are distant. It’d take years for us to reach them. I don’t know how it is for Violet, but Rose gave up everything to be with him. If she lost him…”  
  
“Speakin’ of which, how’s she taking this?” He asked, pushing bits together on his plate with his fork.  
  
“I haven’t told her yet,” she mumbled. “I’m not sure how to.”  
  
“You’re gonna hafta,” he said around the food in his mouth.  
  
“I know. I’d just like to put it off for as long as possible. Until I have a plan.”  
  
“How’s that coming?”  
  
She buried her face in her knees and shook her head. He sighed loudly and a second later she felt him pat her shoulder. “There ain’t no way for this to end well. I’m sorry I can’t help.”  
  
“I didn’t expect you to. I just…”  
  
“Needed someone to talk to?”  
  
She nodded.   
  
“Whenever you need, Spock.”  
  
Martha smiled. “I’m not Vulcan, you know.”  
  
“Spock is half-Vulcan.”  
  
Her smile broadened into a full-blown grin. “Are you a Trekkie?”  
  
Marc took another bite of stir-fry and chewed deliberately slow. He swallowed and scooped up another bite on his fork. “Maybe,” he answered before tossing it into his mouth.  
  
She glanced at her watch and decided it was past time she left. If she took much longer, Rose would worry. She stood up. “I should go. I’m late enough as it is. Thank you, Marc.”  
  
“Any time. And thanks for dinner.” He gave her a warm smile and waved her on her way.  
  
Ten minutes later, Martha opened the door to their flat and immediately headed for her bedroom. She set her purse down on the bed and took off her jacket before going to look for Rose. She wasn’t in the kitchen or the living room and there was no note tacked to the door. So she tried Rose’s room next where she found her curled up in a little ball on her bed.   
  
“Rose?”  
  
Rose didn’t move.  
  
“Rose?!”   
  
Rose slowly raised her head. Her eyes red and puffy; her cheeks were red and streaked with tears. A shudder rippled through her body as she met Martha’s gaze and saw horror instead of confusion.  
  
She knew.  
  
Martha hesitantly crossed the room to the bed, expecting Rose to stop her, but she didn’t. She sat down on the bed and reached out to place her hand on Rose’s back. “You knew.” Rose croaked. “How long have you known?”  
  
Martha closed her eyes. “Eight days.”  
  
“And you didn’t tell me?”  
  
“I was going to, I just… I didn’t know how. …How did you find out?”  
  
Rose let her legs fall apart and she sat with her feet pressed together, hands lying limply in her lap. “I wanted to see him and I knew it was his lunch break so I went up to the staff room and… and he was sittin’ there. Smilin’. An’ I knew that look. Know it better than anythin’ ‘cos how many times have I seen it? First time I did was the Christmas, day he regenerated. He came back to the flat for dinner, all dressed in his brown suit and coat for the first time, and we looked at each other for a second, and then he was just grinnin’ at me like there wasn’t nothin’ wrong ever.   
  
“No one ever got that smile except for me. But he wasn’t lookin’ at that woman with _my_ smile an’ she–she… he’s… Oh, God, he’s in love with her, I could tell.”  
  
Martha was silent. Rose took a deep shuddering breath and scrubbed her face with her hands.  
  
“Who is she?” she finally demanded.   
  
“Her name’s Violet Lewis.”  
  
“Lewis,” she whispered. “But that’s… _I’m_ Lewis.” She fisted her hands in her hair and rocked forward.   
  
“I know. She’s a lot like you, in fact. I think she’s supposed to be you.”  
  
Rose frowned at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
“John’s part of the Doctor, yeah? The Doctor loves you more than anything. Don’t you think someone who came from him like that would as well? But you weren’t there. So he–”  
  
“He found someone that reminded him of me even though he doesn’t know me.”   
  
“Yeah.”   
  
“This is so messed up. This wasn’t supposed to happen.” She took a deep shuddering breath. “Hand me my bag?”  
  
She wanted to hold the watch. It soothed her like nothing else these days.   
  
Martha nodded and leaned down, plucking her purse from the floor and hanging it to her. Rose reached inside and rummaged around. She frowned and searched some more. She looked absolutely panicked by the time she tipped it upside down and shook the contents out. She shifted everything aside, searching frantically, lifted up her purse and checked every nook and cranny before springing from the bed. She ran over to her closet to check her jacket pockets while Martha checked the pile of stuff again.  
  
“It’s gone!” Rose cried. “Oh, my God, Martha! It’s gone! I’ve lost the watch!”  
  
“How could you lose it?” she demanded.  
  
“I…I dropped my purse earlier,” she whispered. “Outside the staff room. I was so upset that I had to get out of there. I didn’t realize I’d dropped it until I went back to my desk and Aiden said someone had turned it in. They must’ve taken it.”  
  
She lunged for her phone, flipping it open, and punched in someone’s number. She brushed her hair away from her ear and worried her bottom lip with her teeth as it rang. “Aiden!” she shouted. “Who turned in my purse today? …No, no, shut up and listen because this is important. You know that pocket watch I have? It’s missing. I had it in my bag earlier and now it’s _gone_. …A kid? Well, what did he look like?!”  
  
Martha put her face in her hands. Oh, God, this week was just one nightmare after another. The Last of the Time Lords and they’d gone and lost him to some little kid.   
  
“Oh that’s just bloody fantastic, ain’t it? …I know, I know,” she sighed. “I’m sorry. Thanks for your help. I’ll see you at work. …Y-yes, Aiden, that is one way to say goodbye.” Rose smiled the tiniest bit, said goodbye, and hung up. She sighed heavily and bowed her head.  
  
A moment later it snapped up and she stood. “I’m heading to the TARDIS. She might have some way for me to track the watch.”   
  
Martha bolted after her. “Wait for me!”


	42. Whispering Watch

  
He wasn’t supposed be off the fifth floor without a grownup but it was Macy’s birthday soon and he wanted to get her something from the gift shop with the money his mother had given him, but none of the doctors or nurses would take him down. Dr. Smith had come by earlier to tell him he didn’t have anything new for today but hadn’t stuck around long enough for Elliot to ask him. So he had to go himself.  
  
He waited near the elevators until the coast was clear then called one up and rode down to the first floor. As he was following the signs down the halls, he tried his best not to look like he knew where he was doing. The minute he looked lost or confused was when the grownups would swoop in to “help” him. He learned that a long time ago. People passed him in the hall, sometimes with healthy kids. Those kids would stare at him and his scrawny body and pale skin and hairless head with curiosity and pity. He hated that.  
  
When he was nearing the food court, he noticed a blonde woman standing outside a door, looking through the glass. He couldn’t see all of her face but he was struck by familiarity. He knew her, he realized, but how? She didn’t look like a doctor or a nurse or anyone that would be on his floor regularly. As he tried to work out where he knew her from, her face crumpled in pain, her purse slipped from her fingers, and she turned and ran in the opposite direction of Elliot.  
  
He blinked. That wasn’t right. Women never just dropped their purses. Never, never, ever. They were like extensions of their bodies or something. Like guys and their Stetsons. Those kinds of things never got left behind. She’d probably be missing her purse later. He wasn’t supposed to take things that didn’t belong to him but there was no way it’d still be there when she came back. If he took it with him, though, she wouldn’t know where to find it.  
  
He bit his lip. He’d passed a help desk back around the corner. He could take it there so the grownups to get it back to her. But if he did that, they’d probably call someone to take him back upstairs and then he’d get in big trouble… Or maybe he could write a quick note and run before they stopped him. Yeah, he could do that.  
  
Before anyone could beat him to it, he zipped forward, scooped up the brown bag, and headed for the clinic.  
  
He didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary at first, but then he became aware of a quiet whispering. Elliot frowned and glanced around but there was no one around. The whispering continued, rising in volume, and he felt a fluttering against the base of his skull, like something brushing their fingers across the inside.  
  
 _I’m here … I’m trapped in here…I’m kept inside the cogs…_  
  
It was coming from the purse.  
  
Elliot glanced around quickly and slipped into a small alcove. He unzipped the purse and rummaged around for whatever could be talking. His fingers brushed warm metal then around it and he pulled out– a pocket watch?  
  
 _Elliot…_  
  
He dropped the bag and held the watch with both hands, studying it, then flipped it over. He nearly dropped it as well. No. Freaking. Way.  
  
It was _the_ watch. The one he’d drawn over a week ago, the day Dr. Smith read him that broken story. It was the only thing that appeared in his head. He hadn’t shown Dr. Smith, though. He’d been afraid to for some reason. And here it was, in his hands, _the pocket watch_. Somehow…it was real.  
  
Elliot swallowed, his fingers moved to the clasp of their own accord, flipping it open.  
  
 _ **NO!**_ The watch roared. _Hide me, little boy. Keep me hidden…_  
  
Elliot shut the watch and stuffed it in his pocket. He picked up the purse, zipped it shut, and ran.  
  
Ten minutes later, Elliot sat alone in the ward with the watch in his hands. He’d forgotten to get Macy’s present before coming back. It didn’t really matter right now. Not when he was holding the watch from John’s story and it was whispering impossible things to him.  
  
 _Alone…trapped… Time Lord… Rose?_  
  
This had to be some kind of trick. Someone was messing with him. Devin? Nah, Devin wouldn’t go this far just to pick on him. He didn’t have the brains for this kind of thing, anyway. But this wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. This was something out of Dr. Smith’s dreams! He couldn’t have set this up though, could he? He could’ve, though. He was a grownup; he could do whatever he wanted. But he wouldn’t do this…would he?  
  
 _Rose?_ the watch whispered again.  
  
 _I’m not Rose,_ Elliot thought angrily. _Rose isn’t real. And this isn’t funny._  
  
The watch was silent.  
  
He felt the tiny little fingers brushing the back of his head again and he shook his head to dislodge them. It didn’t work. Elliot scowled at the watch. It had gotten angry when he opened it earlier. He fingered the clasp for a few seconds and then opened the watch once again.  
  
Golden light flared from the watch, the whispering intensified and became not just one voice, but dozens overlapping, with a familiar one louder than the west. A dozen scenes came with it, things that he’d only had glimpses of before, now dancing around before him in colors so brilliant and sharp they couldn’t possibly have been seen with humans eyes. Daleks, Cybermen, a werewolf, and things he had never seen; alien worlds; the faces of humans, some he could name, some he couldn’t. Then there was laughter, warm and delighted that brought with it a powerful emotion Elliot had never felt before, sharp and as painful as it was wonderful and warm, and he saw her.  
  
 _Rose laughing. Rose sipping from a mug. Rose sleeping. Rose dancing beneath the moonlight. Rose shining as the Bad Wolf. Rose wearing a brown pinstriped jacket. Rose Rose Rose Rose–  
  
 **You must keep me hidden Elliot!**_  
  
Elliot slammed the watch shut with a loud gasp. The images ceased, the voices died away. Once more he was surrounded by the din of the hospital, the steady beeping of nearby machines, and the hum of hundreds of voices and their lives brushing up against the edges of his mojo.  
  
He drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and stared down at the watch in his hands.  
  
 _It’s real…all of that was real. Is it all real? Are all the dreams real?_  
  
No response.  
  
 _Who are you?! …The Doctor? Are you the Doctor? Why are you in there?_  
  
The watch didn’t answer him except for the faintest of whispers and brushes against the inside of his head, which he now realized were in his mind. Just like when his mojo showed him things.  
  
 _What am I supposed to do?_ He very nearly screamed the words aloud.  
  
 _Keep me hidden…_ it whispered. _Keep…safe. Don’t open…again._  
  
Elliot kept the watch in his pocket when he went to lunch. He ate in silence surrounded by those he lived with but feeling more separate than ever. The watch was whispering rather loudly but no one glanced his way or even so much as twitched. He may be mute, but they were deaf and blind.  
  
After lunch he returned to his bed to collect his sketchpad and pencil case then headed with the others to the playroom. He sat at his usual table and opened the sketchpad to a new page. The watch had shown him so many things and he was itching to draw them. If this really was all true then he needed to somehow let Dr. Smith know. Maybe Dr. Smith was like him, able to see parts of other people’s lives without meaning to.  
  
The Doctor was in trouble. Elliot was sure of it. Maybe he’d gone after Rose when she hadn’t come back and had, somehow, gotten trapped inside. Elliot was a dying, voiceless child. No one would listen to him. But John Smith was alive and healthy and doctor. Maybe that was why _the_ Doctor had reached out to him for help. But he hadn’t understood so he was trying to reach him through Elliot. That had to be it.  
  
He licked his lips, trying to decide what would be best to get Dr. Smith’s attention with. It had to be something important but it couldn’t be something completely new or he wouldn’t recognize it.  
  
Elliot paused when one image came to mind. Flipping back through the pages, he came to the one of the faceless black woman. It was her! And she had a face! There was still no name but she had a _face!_ He pulled a pencil out of his bag and immediately started to add in the details he’d long sought after. It didn’t take much time to finish drawing, erase the mistakes, and fill in the shadows. Smiling, he leaned back to survey the (finally) finished product. Oh yes. This was her. This was definitely her.  
  
Abruptly, the smile melted into a frown as he realized why she looked familiar.  
  
 _This is… No, no it… that ain’t possible._  
  
It looked like Miss James.  
  
Where was she? He looked around the room. Not here, not yet. She didn’t usually show up until the end of playtime on the days she came at all. Where would she be now? Lunch, maybe? But did she eat in the cafeteria or somewhere else? Leaving the floor twice in the same day was risky business, but he had to see her. He needed to compare the drawing with her face and, if they matched, get an explanation from her.  
  
He gathered up his pencils, zipped the pouch, and shut his sketchbook, tucking them both under his arm. Glancing around the room to make sure no one was watching him–being ignored could be a good thing sometimes–then he headed for the door. He looked back one last time then slipped out of the room and headed to the left.  
  
If Miss James really was the woman in the picture then that meant she was a companion of the Doctor. Maybe that blonde woman earlier stole the watch–or maybe she was the one that trapped him in there to begin with–and Miss James was here to find it. Ooh, he should give it to her when he found her.  
  
But wait–that blonde woman, it could’ve been Rose!  
  
But, but, the dream said he was alone and Rose wasn’t with him. The watch knew he was here, even knew his name. If Rose had the watch then he’d know it.  
  
Miss James must be looking for her, too. If he showed her the pictures he had of Rose then she’d know he could help her and she could help him convince Dr. Smith what was happening. She was his student and his friend, after all.  
  
 _Does she know the Doctor’s trying to reach Dr. Smith?_ he wondered. It was possible.  
  
So focused on his thoughts about Miss James and the Doctor, he didn’t see the familiar doctor standing in front of him until he walked into his legs. Elliot jerked back sharply, dropping his pencil case in surprise, and only managed to catch his sketchpad. He looked up.  
  
“Whoa there! What are you doing out here, Elliot?” Dr. Smith knelt down to pick up the pencil case.  
  
Elliot grinned. Now was his chance to show him the drawing and then he could help him find Miss James!  
  
Dr. Smith handed him the case–  
  
The whispering from the watch roared like never before and _images of the Doctor flashed through his mind. Tall, brown hair, brown eyes, and a brown pinstriped suit. He scowled. He roared. He laughed. He smiled. He walked forward with the sonic screwdriver pointed ahead–_  
  
With a loud gasp, Elliot recoiled, snatching the pencil case from him. He trembled from head to toe and stared up at Dr. Smith–no.  
  
“Elliot are you alright?” he asked in concern, reaching out.  
  
Elliot skittered away from his reaching hand and ran. He ran like he’d never run before. For the first time since he’d met Dr. Smith and heard his stories, he was _afraid_. If he had a voice he would’ve screamed. One or two people looked like they wanted to stop him and someone shouted that he shouldn’t run, but everyone else got out of his way. His lungs, not the strongest things to begin with, burned from exhaustion. He hadn’t run this much in a single day since before he’d come back to the hospital.  
  
He didn’t go back to the playroom; he went straight to the ward and crawled under his bed. He lay underneath there, chest heaving and muscles aching, and stared at the floor. His mind was absolutely racing. Who was that? Where was Dr. Smith? Was Dr. Smith even real? What about the Doctor?  
  
 _What in the heck is going on?!_  
  
He put his hands over his face and exhaled loudly.  
  
 _Okay, calm down, dummy,_ he thought. _Obviously you got something wrong. Think._  
  
He had a pocket watch in his pocket that had the Doctor trapped in it somehow. The Doctor didn’t want him to open the watch.  
  
Dr. Smith was a human who had dreams about the Doctor. (Or did he?) He was a pediatrician. They didn’t just let anyone be one. He started working at the hospital two months ago. He liked Dr. Lewis a lot and she liked him, too.  
  
Oh no, was she in on it, too?! No way. She was too sweet and she’d been here way longer than even Elliot. _Maybe she doesn’t know?_ Aw man and he’d helped get them together.  
  
He hadn’t seen Rose anywhere so he had to assume she wasn’t here.  
  
Miss James may or may not actually be a companion of the Doctor’s. He didn’t know why she was here but he hoped it was to help the Doctor. She was around Dr. Smith a lot so either he didn’t know who she was or she was actually helping him. But he didn’t think she was bad. His mojo didn’t send anything bad about her.  
  
But…hadn’t his mojo warned him about Dr. Smith in its own way? Everything he picked up on from him was blurred, distorted, and murky. Wrong. No one else was like that.  
  
What if–what if Dr. Smith stole the Doctor’s body? Hadn’t he said in the dream that something was chasing him? What if he was one of those? No, no that wouldn’t make sense. For one, Dr. Smith wouldn’t have told him about it if he were a bad guy. And now that Elliot thought about it, he was sure the Doctor had done something with a watch to protect himself from the bad guys. He must’ve hidden himself in there. But what about his body?  
  
If that was really the Doctor’s body out there then who was in it? Who was Dr. Smith?  
  
He heard footsteps against the tiles entering the room and he held his breath, turning his head to look.  
  
“Elliot?” Dr. Jasmine Oikawa, his own pediatrician, called.  
  
If he came out then she’d ask him about Dr. Smith. But if he stayed hidden they’d keep on looking for him and he’d be in big trouble later. A little trouble now or a lot of trouble later?  
  
He sighed, pulled the watch from his pocket and set it on his sketchpad, then crawled out from underneath his bed. She was starting to leave by the time he poked his head up. He clapped his hands together to get her attention. Dr. Oikawa sighed in relief when she saw him staring back at her. She walked over to him as he climbed onto his bed. She sat down next to him.  
  
“Are you alright?”  
  
Elliot didn’t respond. He wouldn’t until he saw a good enough reason to. He’d discovered this was the best way to get adults to get to the point quickly.  
  
“John Smith says he found you in the hall and you ran away from him for no reason. Were you doing something you weren’t supposed to?”  
  
 _Say yes_ , the watch whispered clearly from under the bed.  
  
Elliot nodded slowly.  
  
“What were you doing?”  
  
The watch was silent. Elliot bit the inside of his lip. Great. Now what?  
  
“Okay, you don’t want to tell me. I understand. John?” Dr. Oikawa called.  
  
Dr. Smith stepped in the room. Elliot blinked in a mixture of surprise and horror. Had he been here the whole time? Dr. Oikawa went to meet him in the center of the room and Elliot wanted to tell her not to go. To not leave him alone in the room with Dr. Smith whom he wasn’t sure he trusted entirely. She left and he approached him cautiously, like he was afraid Elliot would bolt at any second. He had half a mind to but that would only make this worse.  
  
Instead of sitting down on Elliot’s bed, he sat down on the one next to his. Elliot studied his feet intently. “You scared me back there,” he said after a moment. “I thought I’d hurt you.”  
  
Elliot shook his head.  
  
“What were you up to, then? You can tell me, you know. I’m your friend.”  
  
 _Are you? Are you really?_  
  
When Elliot didn’t move, John reached over to Elliot’s nightstand and picked up his notepad and a pen. He held them out to him. Elliot hesitated. Would it happen again if he didn’t have the watch on him? He took them gingerly, waiting for the onslaught that never came.  
  
Sighing in relief, Elliot flipped open his notepad to any empty page and thought for a second. What could his excuse be for being where he wasn’t supposed to? Oh! Duh!  
  
 _It’s Macy’s birthday soon. I wanted to buy her something from the gift shop._  
  
Dr. Smith read the note then smiled. “Oh, is that all? Elliot, you could’ve told me. I would’ve taken you down there.”  
  
He grinned sheepishly.  
  
“I’ve got a minute. Shall we go now?”  
  
It would look suspicious if he refused the offer. He didn’t really want to go anywhere with Dr. Smith until he solved this whole mystery but he wouldn’t get another chance at his. So he ducked under his bed to retrieve the wad of dollars his mom had given him the other day. He started to pick the watch up but hesitated. If he took it with him he might get more images. But did he really want to just leave it alone? No. For whatever reason, the Doctor had spoken to him and was counting on him to hide him. So he stuffed the watch into his pocket along with the money and followed Dr. Smith down to the first floor.  
  
Later that night when all the other children were sound asleep, Elliot slipped out of bed and pulled the small flashlight from his drawer. He crawled underneath his bed, switched it on, and opened his sketchbook. The pictures had been plaguing him for hours. He had to draw all of them or they’d never leave him alone.  
  
He drew the Doctor. As he worked, he realized that the face of Dr. Smith wasn’t the only one. There were nine others: old men, middle-aged men, and one man younger than the others; long hair, short hair, dark and light. No red hair, though. No one face was more real than any of the others. Didn’t Dr. Smith mention something about multiple lives…? That would make this one the Tenth. The oldest so far even though he looked like one of the youngest.  
  
He drew a large planet with as much orange on the surface as there was blue on Earth. _Gallifrey_ , the watch whispered. The Doctor’s home planet. Gone, now, Elliot knew from the stories. He drew a nebula in deep space called the Medusa Cascade. The watch didn’t tell anything about it, including the name, but Elliot knew without a doubt that it was right.  
  
He drew the Doctor’s beautiful blue ship. The TARDIS, she was called. He drew the faces he’d seen of people who’d been on the TARDIS at some point. He could even name some of them. Susan. Jamie. Mel. Adric. Sarah Jane. He devoted an entire page to aliens he couldn’t name and several he could.  
  
He drew a beach at night with sand that glimmered and sparkled. The TARDIS rested in the sand. A few feet away next to a dying fire, the Doctor and Rose lay together on a blanket, staring at the stars.  
  
He drew Rose. He drew Rose a lot. Rose laughing with an ice cream cone in her hand. Rose holding a mug of tea. Rose sleeping under a pink bedspread. Rose dancing beneath the moonlight in a silver dress that flowed around her ankles. Rose wearing the one of the old Doctor’s jackets, a leather one that was way too big for her. Rose with tears on her cheeks.  
  
He was at it for hours. Exhaustion tugged at his body and his fingers ached from gripping a pencil for so long. At some point he fell asleep because he noticed there was drool on the paper. But he didn’t care. He was on a roll.  
  
Across town, John dreamed of a blonde woman. He didn’t know if it was Violet or Rose. He didn’t care. She was running and he was following.  
  
Several blocks away in her room, Martha was sound asleep, snoring softly.  
  
In the next room over, Rose was working with the scanner she’d acquired from the TARDIS earlier to trace artron energy. She didn’t really know how to work it any it’d taken time for her to understand how the standard mode functioned. For the last half an hour she sat on her bed with a notebook propped on her leg and a pen in hand, trying to make sense of the readings. There seemed to be five sources of artron in this town. The largest was, of course, the TARDIS. Two of them were roughly the same size–herself and John, she wagered, since one result was listed as not even a meter away from the scanner–and the slightly smaller source was close enough that it had to be Martha. The fifth and final one was the smallest–the watch, obviously–and if she did her math right, it was still in the hospital.  
  
She double-checked her work. She used her super phone to triple check.  
  
The watch hadn’t left the hospital. Which meant the kid who took it was still there. He must’ve been a patient. Rose smiled in relief. She’d be getting the Doctor back soon enough. Satisfied, she switched off the scanner, set it aside with her notebook, and crawled under the covers.  
  
If she’d left the scanner on for just a few moments longer, she would’ve seen it register a new source of artron.  


~*~  
  
Neither she, Martha, John, nor Elliot noticed the green light flashing periodically over Bridgeton. Nor did they notice when something like a meteorite streaked across the sky and landed in the largest park. It was so late at night that no one noticed, in fact, except for a few drunks, one man who was so high he wouldn’t think it was real in the morning, and a homeless man named Marc, who was walking near the Walton Park when it landed.  
  
At first, Marc thought he was seeing things. But he hadn’t done nothing or drank nothing for weeks now and he wasn’t _that_ tired. Which meant either someone was punking around…or another alien space ship had just landed in his town. Bridgeton was suddenly an E.T. hotspot and he wasn’t sure he liked that. He was surprised the government hadn’t already swooped in to capture the blue box and its passengers.  
  
Common sense said he should just keep walking. He didn’t know for a fact that these were friends of Martha and Rose. They could be. Or they could be enemies. Not all aliens were good, after all. They could be completely unrelated to Rose and Martha and not even the same species.  
  
Marc glanced at the payphone at the corner. He wished he had a way to call ‘em. Did aliens even have cell phones? But he couldn’t just do nothing! He started towards the payphone. He’d promised he wouldn’t mention them and their box but they never said anything about other aliens.  
  
He picked up the payphone and dialed 911. Maybe someone else had already reported it–he can’t have been the only person who saw that thing–someone who could back him up. It rang once then some lady answered.  
  
“Hey, yeah, listen, I swear I’m not drunk or high or nothin’, but I just seen a UFO land in the middle of Walton.”  
  
 _“A UFO,”_ the operator repeated flatly. _“Sir–”_  
  
“I’m serious. It was bright green and it flew right over my head then landed in the park! C’mon, I can’t be the only one that seen it! You gotta get somebody!”  
  
 _“Sir, have you been drinking this evening?”_  
  
“I told you I ain’t drunk or high or nothin’!” he shouted in exasperation. “And this ain’t a joke, either!”  
  
 _“If it makes you feel better, sir, I can send a squad car to check it out.”_  
  
“A squad car?! Lady, you need to call the goddamn feds!”  
  
She didn’t believe him. God dammit. _“What’s your name…or would you rather your tip be anonymous?”_  
  
“Nah, I’ll tell you my name. Name’s Marc. And if the aliens turn out to be homicidal, ready to take over the damn planet, you just remember Marc warned ya and ya didn’t listen!” With that he slammed the phone onto the hook and stormed away with his hands stuffed in his pockets.  
  
He should go back to his alley and hide behind the box until Rose or Martha showed up so they could deal with it. He should. But those cops the lady was sending–if she even _was_ –would be going in expecting punk kids or some shit. Not aliens. Marc’s hand curled around the switchblade in his pocket and he looked at the park. Maybe if he got a look at the ship or the aliens it could help his aliens out. It was a bad idea, he damn well knew it, but better he went in than them. One human wouldn’t make a blip on their radar like two aliens would. He nodded to himself then jogged across the street and into the park.  
  
He would never come out again.  
  
~*~  
  
The next morning after breakfast while all of the kids were together in the ward, Elliot sat alone on his bed with the sketchpad in his lap, doodling aimlessly and trying to stay awake. The clock on the wall read 2am by the time he’d crawled back into bed last night and his tiny body, already weakened from leukemia, was struggling with just six hours of rest. He was going in for treatments later today so hopefully he could sleep afterwards.  
  
His eyes flicked down to the paper and he noted without much surprise he was drawing the figure of a woman facing away from him. Rose, probably. The hair was wrong for it to be Miss James.  
  
Rose was woven inextricably with every memory, every emotion that came from the watch. A girl whose future once looked as bleak as his in its own way saved the world and ran away to a life of stars and freedom. No one could make her stay if she didn’t want to. She made herself heard no matter what. He envied her.  
  
Miss James he wanted to know more about. Why was she with the Doctor and Rose? What had she done since then? How many people had she saved? Where was her family? Was she _really_ a student doctor or was it just a disguise? Would she believe he wanted to help her?  
  
He added her next to Rose in the picture. He imagined they were staring at something ahead of them, something horrible. And they were on their own, just the two of them, because the Doctor was trapped somewhere and there was no one to help them. They were going to save the world by themselves. The whispering from the watch, hidden under is bed next to Macy’s birthday present, intensified as the scene formed in his mind. Surrounding him. Pulling him into–  
  
 _Rose and Miss James–Martha, her name was Martha–stood together on grass, staring in horror at a city under attack, smoke rising from the homes and buildings, the trees around them beginning to burn. From high above, millions of flying metal balls swarmed, shooting at everything, laughing with glee as people screamed in pain in panic.  
  
Rose had on a blue leather jacket, shorter than the red on Martha wore, and gripped something small and black in her hands tightly.  
  
“We have to go.” Rose said urgently. “We have to go_ now _.”  
  
“But we’re coming back.” Martha vowed.  
  
They turned to run– _  
  
–and Elliot was jerk back into the present with a startled gasp. He fell sideways off the bed and hit the floor with a loud smack. He whimpered in pain and laid there for a moment, stunned, gasping for air.  
  
“You okay?!” One of the other boys, Ramon, asked. He stood over him, eyes wide with concern. Elliot took a deep breath and nodded. He pushed himself up, wincing, and Ramon grabbed his arm to help him.  
  
Elliot exhaled loudly and sat down on his bed, rubbing his arm where he’d fell on it.  
  
“Do you need me to get a nurse?” Ramon asked. Elliot shook his head. “Okay. Don’t sit so close to the edge next time.”  
  
Ramon went back to his friends and Elliot scooted further onto his bed. Why had he even fallen? He glanced down at the sketchpad. Blinked. Looked again.  
  
No way.  
  
It was the scene from his mind. Everything from Rose’s jacket to the countless murderous balls in the sky. There was no way he’d… that was impossible. He looked at the clock. Not even two minutes had passed since he last checked. So how in the heck had he drawn that much in that amount of detail within seconds?  
  
He pulled his legs close and propped the sketchpad up on them. This hadn’t been like the other ones. It didn’t feel like a memory. It felt like a warning.  
  
The doors to the ward opened but Elliot didn’t look away from the page until he recognized the voice calling for attention.  
  
It was Miss James!  
  
His head snapped up. Finally! Now he could give her the watch and she could help him and…and… She wasn’t alone. There was someone with her. Someone slightly taller than her. Someone blonde. Someone who made the watch underneath his bed cry out in delight and a surge of emotions that caused Elliot’s body to tremble to flow from it.  
  
“Quiet everyone,” Martha called and clapped her hands for silence. All the other kids got quiet and looked at the women in surprise. “Thank you. This is my friend, Marion. She works here at the hospital.”  
  
“Hi!” The newest girl chirped, waving her tiny hand. Rose Tyler smiled at her.  
  
She was…she was _here_. Right in front of him. Dress pants and a nice shirt, hair pinned back, makeup light and professional. Not like herself at all. But even though towered over all the children she didn’t seem intimidating. Her smile was warm and kind and he knew without his mojo telling him so that he could trust her.  
  
“Hello,” Rose replied and knelt down in front of her. “What’s your name?”  
  
“Alexis.”  
  
“Are you from London?” asked one of the boys. “Because you sound like Miss James and Dr. Smith but kinda diferent, too.”  
  
“I am a Londoner,” Rose answered, straightening up. “But I’m from a different part of London. It’s a really, really big city, and people sound different if they come from different places. I’m from the East End and almost everyone there talks like this.”  
  
“Sounds funny,” piped the red-haired girl, Bianca, in her thick southern drawl.  
  
“Sounds funny,” Rose mimicked. “Well, this sounds funny to me.”  
  
A few of the kids laughed.  
  
“Listen, everyone, I’ve got a problem. I dropped my purse yesterday in the hall on the first floor and–”  
  
“Do you need help finding it?” Devin asked sweetly. “I’m good at finding things.”  
  
“Yeah, especially when you’re one that took ‘em.” One of the other kids retorted. Devin shot him a glare and Elliot smirked.  
  
“No, no, I’ve got my purse back. It was turned it in to the desk but something was missing from it. A pocket watch. It’s round, brass, with a latch at the top and on the front it has a bunch of weird circles and lines. I asked the man who was there at the time and he told me it was a little boy, a patient.”  
  
Elliot looked down at his sketchbook and felt his cheeks grow hot. The purse had been Rose’s. He’d _stolen_ from Rose! No, it was worse than that. He’d taken _the Doctor_ from Rose. The watch was still thrumming with emotion and whispering her name over and over. But… but the Doctor had gotten his attention first. Elliot wouldn’t have known about the watch if it hadn’t spoken to him. So why was it suddenly excited to be rescued?  
  
“I promise I won’t be mad at you,” Rose told them. “But if anyone’s seen the watch, or if you know who has it, I need to know. It’s very, very important to me and it’s all I have left of the man I love. I need it back.”  
  
Elliot raised his head just enough to see the other kids. They were looking at each other expectantly but no one even glanced his way.  
  
“Elliot went downstairs yesterday.” Devin blurted out suddenly. “He snuck off on his own. I saw him.”  
  
Elliot glared at him and Devin grinned nastily. Well, looked like he was finally getting back at him for blacking his eye. And, great, now Rose was coming towards him. He swallowed and shut his sketchpad. Underneath his bed, the watch quieted. Waiting. Oh, now it was quiet? Elliot would’ve thought it’d be screaming with her so close. The Doctor wanted to go back to her, didn’t he?  
  
Rose was standing not even two feet from him and there was so much he wanted to tell her, to show her, but he knew she wouldn’t want to hear any of it once she’d found out what he’d done. “Well?” she asked.  
  
Elliot said nothing.  
  
“He doesn’t talk,” Martha told her quietly.  
  
Understanding dawned on Rose’s face. “Oh. Martha’s mentioned you before. She… her friend Smith reads to you, doesn’t he?”  
  
Elliot nodded.  
  
Rose lowered her voice. “Did you take my watch, Elliot?”  
  
 _No, Elliot. It’s not safe anymore. Keep me hidden. Don’t tell her._  
  
He swallowed. That didn’t make sense but if the Doctor was passing up the chance to be with Rose again then it had to be for a good reason. Elliot shook his head but couldn’t help but wonder if he hadn’t just made things worse for himself. Because he’d have to give the watch back at some point and she would be furious at him for not returning it now. She was terrified without the watch. He could sense it.  
  
He reached for his notebook, pulled a pen his pencil case, flipped to an empty page and wrote quickly. _I did find a purse and turn it in. It was on the floor just around the corner from the desk I took it to. _  
  
“But you didn’t take the watch?” Rose asked, almost desperately. He almost changed his mind right then and there but the watch, sensing this, repeated its warning.  
  
 _I am so, so, so, so sorry, Rose,_ he thought as he shook his head.  
  
She closed her eyes and sighed, misery pouring from her in waves. Acting on impulse, he opened his sketchpad and tore out a drawing of a golden wolf from last night, handing it to her. Rose opened her eyes and stared at the drawing in surprise. She looked like she wanted to ask him something but decided against it. She smiled, carefully folding the piece of paper, and tucked it in her pocket.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
He watched her leave with Miss James and sighed. What had he done?


	43. Falling into Place

  
Violet usually spent her days off relaxing. Her job could be quite stressful. She loved working with children and helping them, but it was always disheartening to watch a child grow steadily worse as their body failed. Sometimes the parents could be a huge pain in the rear–it often seemed that the parent would fuss more than the child–but, unfortunately, you couldn’t work with children without dealing with the parents as well. But every time she sent one of her inpatients home or saw positive test results, her heart would swell and she’d feel like shouting her joy to the sky. Or over the intercom.   
  
This last week had been less taxing than usual and she knew part of that had to do with John. She’d thought he was handsome the moment she laid eyes on him but she’d never expected him to look at her twice. Her track record with men wasn’t exactly flattering despite the pretty face and decent body that worked for pretty much every other blonde. Her sister Liz thought it was because her brains were bigger than her boobs.   
  
There was a serious flaw in this logic, however. Liz wasn’t as smart as Violet was but she didn’t fare any better than her with men. When Violet pointed this out to her, Liz decided they must be exception to the status quo like Elle Woods from Legally Blonde.   
  
At least she did until a few nights ago when Violet showed up to her work with John.   
  
Liz had all but dragged her away from the table early on to get the details. “Do you have a boyfriend?”   
  
“I guess I do.”  
  
“When did this start?”  
  
“Last week.”  
  
Liz had peered around the corner to get another look at John. “I’ve never seen him before. Where did you meet him?”  
  
“He works at the hospital with me. He just moved here from London a few months ago.”  
  
“Which London?”  
  
“England.”  
  
Liz gave her an incredulous look. “Tall, handsome, smart, and he’s British. Oh. My. God. Sister, I think you just struck gold.”  
  
Violet laughed quietly at the memory and looked down at her list. She’d invited John over for dinner after learning he was a mediocre cook. He was currently at home sleeping after working all night and before her invitation, all he’d had to look forward to was a TV dinner. So she’d browsed through her grandmother’s cookbook and found the recipe for tuna casserole, wrote up a list, and headed to Kroger.  
  
She was examining the different brands of tuna, glancing periodically at her purse to make sure it was still there, when she just happened to see a familiar black woman coming up the isle towards her. She grabbed a can of tuna quickly, tossed it into her cart, scratched it off her list, and finally looked back up when she heard the cart stop in front of hers. Violet bit the inside her lip and tried to remember where she knew this young woman from.  
  
“Hello, Dr. Lewis,” she said with an English accent.   
  
Oh, she was one of the med-students; the one John spoke about often. They’d both moved from London around the exact same time but they’d never met until they came here. She’d seen them interacting a few times and in the beginning she’d thought maybe she was infatuated with him, but it quickly became apparent her interest in John was platonic. If anything, she acted like they were old friends.  
  
“Martha, right?” Violet asked. “John’s friend.”  
  
“That’s me.” Martha nodded. “Day off?”  
  
“Yes. You too?”  
  
“Yep. And it’s my week to do the shopping.”  
  
Violet realized again that she knew very little about their newest med student. Violet usually made an effort to get acquainted with the new students when they came but Martha had arrived after her peers and Violet had never gotten the opportunity to do so. Not without approaching John as well and she’d been far too shy for that in the beginning.   
  
“Do you have a boyfriend?”   
  
Martha laughed and shook her head. “No. I share a flat with my friend and we split the responsibilities.”  
  
“Makes sense.”   
  
“Plus–” Martha glanced around and leaned closer “–I really don’t think it’s safe for me to have a boyfriend right now. My two best friends have been dancing around each other for years. I’ve been on them for months and I _finally_ got them to make some decent progress. I’m pretty sure if I ever showed up with a bloke, they wouldn’t hesitate to stick their noses in.”  
  
Violet laughed at the grimace on the younger woman’s face. “Was it worth it?”  
  
“Yes,” she answered immediately. “They do love each other very much. In fact, I think he’s going to be moving in with us soon. We’ve been living separate from him since we got here but we’ve decided we don’t like it. We’re used to living together, you see.” She sighed. “It’s tough being the third wheel in my own home but they’re happier together and I’m happy when they are.”   
  
It seemed like a strange relationship to Violet but there was also something quite appealing about it. They must’ve been friends for a long time if they’d gone and formed a familial unit of their own.   
  
“And this way, I won’t have to the dishes as often.”  
  
She laughed. “That is a definite plus.”   
  
Martha grinned at her. “And what about you? I hear you’ve got a thing with John Smith.”  
  
 _I see what you’re doing,_ Violet thought. This girl was used to helping her friends’ relationships along. Maybe she was intending to do that now. She didn’t think she and John needed help but it was nice to know she had the support of his friend. So she smiled and nodded. “Yeah. He’s coming over tonight for dinner.”  
  
“Oh, really?” Martha’s eyes widened and her enthusiasm suddenly seemed a little…forced. “What are you making?”  
  
“Tuna casserole. That’s why I’m here, actually.” She looked down at her list again.  
  
“Well, don’t let me keep you.” Martha said, taking the hint. “Oh, no, wait. Before you go, I need to ask you something. I’ve noticed you sitting with John and Elliot recently. If you don’t mind me asking, what exactly does John read to him?”  
  
Violet hesitated. She wasn’t sure John wanted people knowing about his dreams. He’d been so nervous telling her, after all, and the only other person he trusted with the knowledge was a shy boy who didn’t talk. And if he hadn’t already told Martha on his own, she probably shouldn’t. “I don’t think I can say.”  
  
“It’s–well, it’s kind of important. My roommate dropped her purse when she was at the hospital the other day. It was returned but something was stolen from it and we were told it was a pediatric patient that had turned the purse in. I took her around the wards to ask the children if they knew who had it and one of them said it might’ve been Elliot. He admitted to turning in the purse but he said he hadn’t taken anything. I believed him, he’s not the thieving type, you know? But before we left, he gave her one of the pictures in his sketchbook. I know he draws things from what John reads but that picture actually looked familiar and we were wondering if it was just a coincidence or…”  
  
“What was on it?”   
  
“A golden wolf with glowing eyes.”   
  
The Bad Wolf, it had to be. The human girl who’d harnessed the power of a goddess to reclaim what was hers. He was probably trying to cheer her up. There was no way Violet could explain that to Martha, though. “Well, I don’t know about the picture… but… Please don’t tell him I told you anything.”  
  
“I won’t.”  
  
“He has these dreams about a man called the Doctor. He writes them down and reads them to Elliot. The wolf must’ve been from one of the dreams.”  
  
Martha’s eyes widened. “He dreams he’s the Doctor?” she whispered. “How long has this been going on?”  
  
“At least a month.”  
  
Martha swallowed and shook her head quickly. “Well. Alright then. Thanks. I’ll see you at work.”   
  
She swung her cart around and all but ran down the isle. Violet watched her go, completely dumbfounded, and she stood there staring at the empty isle for a few minutes after Martha was long gone. She’d been prepared for one of several possible reactions but the response she’d received wasn’t one of them. Martha had been surprised for sure, that _had_ been expected, but she’d also acted like Violet had confirmed something for her. And she’d been scared. Very scared. And Violet couldn’t figure out for the life of her, why.   
  
She finished her shopping quickly and headed back to her home. She regretted mentioning the dreams but she really hoped Martha wouldn’t raise a fuss about them. They were just dreams, after all. It wasn’t unheard of for a person to have reoccurring dreams or similar ones on the same subject. The subconscious was a funny thing. But why had Martha been afraid?  
  
She replayed the last part of their conversation over and over in her mind. She hadn’t said anything wrong or even hinted that the Doctor was dangerous. She hadn’t even mentioned he was an alien. She didn’t realize until she’d set her groceries on the counter that it wasn’t Martha’s expressions she should’ve been focusing on. It was her words.  
  
 _“He dreams he’s the Doctor?”_  
  
Violet hadn’t told her that. Martha had immediately jumped to that conclusion and Violet had confirmed it by not correcting her. And Elliot had just so happened to give her roommate something from the dreams a day before? No, this wasn’t coincidence. There was something going on here. Something more than just dreams. Whether it was good or not remained to be seen but she couldn’t ignore the nagging in her gut that it wasn’t.   
  


~*~

  
  
It started as just a normal day for Nikki Hyun. She got up at 7:30am and was at school at 8:30am. She got her breakfast from the cafeteria and took it back to her classroom to eat. She turned in her homework. She paid attention in class, took a few notes, and completed her in-class assignments. She spent most of recess on the swings but did a few rounds on the monkey bars before the whistle blew. At 3pm, the bell rang and the children were dismissed. The bus riders headed to the busses, the car riders went to the front of the school to look for their parents and wait, and the walkers headed for home.   
  
Nikki was a walker this year. It had taken a lot of work to convince her parents she was old enough to walk the two miles from her school to home every afternoon but she’d managed. She liked the walk. It gave her time to think and relax and make plans for the afternoon. Sometimes her friends walked with her. Most of the time they took the bus home. Today was one of those days.   
  
She had no idea as she passed through Walton Park that she was being followed. They’d been watching her since she entered, anticipating the moment she would pass through a secluded area. She stopped at the playground to swing like she sometimes and they waited. She hopped off the swing, scooped up her backpack, and headed across the bridge over the creek.   
  
Nikki moved aside for a cycler to pass and the moment he was over the bridge, they moved in. Alone, out of the view of the main road, and focused on her shoes, it was only too simple for them to surround her on the path.   
  
She screamed, of course, but by the time anyone came looking, she was already gone.   
  


~*~

  
  
It’d been a relatively normal day for Zack Arner, too. He woke up at 8am, ten minutes before the tardy bell rang, to find his mother had, once again, failed to come home last night. He lived a block from the middle school so he made it on time, accidentally leaving behind his homework, of course. So he got lunchtime detention, which he skipped. Then he decided to skip the rest of the day.  
  
He stopped by his mother’s work to check if she’d shown up yet. She had and when she saw her truant son standing in the doorway she simply remarked that he should be in school then went back to what she was doing. She didn’t really care. But he couldn’t get back into school even if he wanted to, their neighbor would call the police if she saw him go inside his house, and walking around in the open at this time of day would get the cops on his ass before he could blink. They were very serious skipping school in Bridgeton. So he retreated to Walton.  
  
Zack got the feeling he was being watched as he wandered aimlessly around the park. It made him antsy but not enough that he wanted to leave. He figured it was probably some bum or maybe a fellow truant student. Whoever it was, he could take them. He used to be on the wrestling team, after all. But as time passed, the uneasy feeling grew and he quickened his pace, heading for the nearest exit.   
  
When they realized he was about to escape, they made their move. He never stood half a chance. No one even noticed he’d been taken.  
  


~*~

  
  
“He what?” Rose whispered.  
  
Martha nodded grimly.   
  
Rose swallowed and looked down at her empty hands. If she had the watch, she would’ve taken it out and held it close. It was one of the only forms of comfort she had and, based on the faint whispering from the watch, the soul within liked the closeness, too. But she didn’t have the watch. So her eyes flicked instead to the piece of paper on the coffee table in front of them. The drawing she’d been given yesterday that had both amazed and horrified her.  
  
John Smith dreamed of being the Doctor while the Doctor slept inside a fob watch. It was ironic. She almost laughed. Almost. Not quite.   
  
_Does he ever dream about me?_ She wondered.  
  
“How long’s this been going on?”  
  
“Based on Violet’s answer, since about the time we got here. He’s been writing them all down a journal and reading them to Elliot, who then draws things from them.”  
  
“Like the wolf.”  
  
“A glowing, golden wolf,” Martha corrected. She licked her lips thoughtfully. “I–Elliot knows who we are. I saw him, Rose. He was looking for something when he went through his sketchbook, he didn’t just pick a drawing to give you at random.”  
  
“He’d never seen me before. How could he know who I am?”  
  
Martha shrugged. “I don’t know but why else would he have given you a glowing wolf?”  
  
Rose sighed. “Okay, so one kid believes were the characters from a fairytale. I don’t see the problem with this.”  
  
“He might tell John.”  
  
“Yeah, alright. You know John better than I do. Would he believe him?”  
  
“No, he probably wouldn’t.”  
  
Rose nodded. “And John…thinks they’re just a story. You must’ve been his dreams by now. If he thought you were really one of the Doctor’s companions he’d have mentioned it by now as a joke or something.”  
  
“Probably,” she admitted. “I just…I feel bad for him. How’s he gonna feel when he finds out his dreams are real and he isn’t?”  
  
Rose closed her eyes and bowed her head. She wanted to say she didn’t care but she knew she did. She’d never hated John, just what he represented. His backstory might have been fabricated but everything in the last nine weeks had been real. All the smiles she’d seen, all the emotions he’d felt, weren’t fake. And soon enough his life would have to end. To be honest, she had tried hard not to think about that part. It was one of the reasons she hadn’t wanted to get to know him.   
  
She resisted the urge to look at Martha because _she_ had befriended him. She never called him the Doctor. It was always John. In fact, that was the first time she’d ever even implied he wasn’t real.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “He’s your friend, isn’t he?”  
  
“…Yeah.”  
  
“I’m sorry. I should’ve never asked you to be close to him. It should’ve been me.”  
  
Martha placed her hand over Rose’s. “I’ll be fine, Rose. If you want to know the truth, it’s a lot like being friends with the Doctor. I know they’re completely separate but our relationship was pretty identical. Besides, it’s better that it was me. I know this whole thing with Violet isn’t going to end well, but at least it wasn’t you.”  
  
“It should’ve been.”  
  
“Probably,” she agreed and leaned back against the couch. “He probably went in intending to love you even as a human.”   
  
“I told the TARDIS I didn’t want that.” Rose admitted. “That I didn’t want to risk fallin’ for his human self. I guess she could only do so much.” She raised her head and frowned. “Never mind all this now. We’ve got to find the watch or we’re never going to get the Doctor back at all. Or, even worse, someone will open it and he’ll come back too soon. I’m surprised the watch hasn’t been–” she stopped abruptly as something occurred to her.   
  
Martha watched Rose’s face shift from frustration to utter shock in the span of about two seconds. Her jaw dropped and she looked at the drawing of the wolf again. “Or…maybe it has,” she whispered. “Martha, remember when I opened the watch for a few seconds?”  
  
It’d been a rough day about two weeks in. She’d just wanted to hear his voice, she said. Martha had seen the watch begin to emit a golden light and panicked, slamming the thing shut before Rose could protest and then yelled at her about it for a good two minutes. As far as she knew, Rose hadn’t opened it since. “Yes.”  
  
“What did it say, do you remember?”  
  
Martha’s brow furrowed in confusion. “It didn’t say anything. There was just this light–”  
  
Rose snapped her fingers, cutting her off. “Exactly! You didn’t hear anything because you’re not very telepathically receptive. That’s why you can’t talk to the TARDIS as easily as we can. When the Doctor talks from inside the watch, it’s telepathic. It’s got to be. He doesn’t have a mouth to speak with; it’s just his mind in there so that’s what he uses. But the TARDIS is the only telepath I can understand easily and it’s hard for me to hear him.”  
  
She shook her head in confusion. “Where are you going with this?”  
  
“What if the watch was found by someone who could hear him even better than I can? Someone who opened the watch out of curiosity and was ordered to keep it closed?”   
  
“You think a telepath found the watch. Maybe it was Elliot. It would explain the wolf.”  
  
Rose nodded. “Yes, it would. But why wouldn’t he give me the watch instead?”  
  
“Ah. Good point.” She sighed heavily. “Well, one down…”  
  
“And about several thousand more to go.”  
  
~*~  
  
John arrived a little early and the casserole wasn’t quite done but he said he didn’t mind waiting. She’d told him to dress casual since it was just dinner and a movie at her house and, well, she wanted to see what he considered casual. He’d dressed fairly nice on their dates so far–usually a dress shirt and slacks, which is pretty much what he wore underneath his coat at work every day. So seeing him in jeans and a t-shirt was a nice change, one she could quickly learn to appreciate. He was very skinny, she knew, and the nearly skintight shirt really proved that, but she could also see more of his arms than ever bore and realized the strength hidden beneath his wiry form.   
  
He brought a bouquet of a variety of flowers and a two-liter of Dr. Pepper. She’d half expected wine; he just seemed like that kind of guy. “I don’t drink alcohol in the evenings when I have something important next day,” he explained when she asked. “I learned that lesson back in school.”  
  
When the casserole was done, he watched as she showed him how to know when it was done and dished it onto a plate while she got the peas and carrots. She also retrieved two wine glasses from the back of the cabinet and poured Dr. Pepper into them, which made him laugh. She liked it his laugh. There was something about the way his entire body got into it, his face lighting up and his shoulders shaking.   
  
They talked as they ate, discussing little things of no great importance, although she did mention seeing Martha at the store. “I’d keep an eye on her if I were you,” she warned.  
  
“Why’s that?” he asked before taking another bite of casserole.   
  
“I think she’s the kind of girl who likes to help along relationships when they don’t seem to be progressing.”  
  
He laughed and swallowed. “Yeah, I got that impression.” He gestured to the bouquet, which now sat in a vase on the table. “She warned me off getting you violets.”   
  
“Remind me to thank her later.”   
  
He helped her clean up after dinner and put the leftover casserole into a container for him to take home later. She washed the dishes and he dried them and while they were at it, he suggested they play the favorites game. It was silly, she hadn’t done it since her first boyfriend in high school, but she had to admit it was a good way to get to know each other. Some of his answers she filed away for later, like his favorite food being bananas, and currently number one on his bucket list was to attend the next Harry Potter midnight premier. Others surprised her, like his favorite word. When she asked, it had slipped out without hesitation and she hadn’t understood it. When she asked him to repeat it, he had, slowly, looking confused.   
  
“That’s not English.”  
  
“No, it’s Gallifreyan.”  
  
“Is that in Europe?   
  
“Yes, it must be,” he replied though he seemed unsure. “I don’t think it exists anymore, though.”  
  
She could tell the subject was bothering him so she decided to move on. “What about your favorite comedy?”   
  
“Hey, hang on. You didn’t tell me your favorite word.”  
  
She thought about it for a moment. “Waffle. I just love the way it sounds. Wah-full. Favorite comedy?”  
  
“ _The Muppet Movie._ You can’t go wrong with the Muppets.”   
  
“Loved that one growing up,” she agreed. “But mine’s _The Santa Clause._ ”  
  
“Never heard of it.”   
  
Violet’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”  
  
He shook his head.  
  
“Oh, well, that changes things!” She washed the soap off her hands and got the popcorn started. “I had another movie in mind but you can’t go on never seeing this movie.”  
  
“What’s it about?”  
  
“Tim Allen’s character kills Santa and becomes the new one.”   
  
John looked disturbed. “He kills Father Christmas to become him? _That’s_ a comedy?”  
  
“No, no! He accidentally makes Santa fall off the roof and becomes the new Santa in his place. …Okay so there’s a lot more to it than that but that’s the basic gist. I’m not really good at summarizing things. It really is a great movie, though. Not morbid or anything.”  
  
“Alright, let’s watch it.”  
  
He dumped the popcorn into a bowl and grabbed the Dr. Pepper; she grabbed two cups and pulled him into the living room. He sat down on the couch with the bowl and cups while she scanned her DVDs for the right one. “I only had this on VHS for the longest time but Liz finally got the DVD for me last Christmas.”   
  
Violet pulled _The Santa Clause_ out of the rack and got it set up in the DVD player. “You want subtitles?”   
  
“I’m fine.”   
  
“Okay.” She pressed play on the remote then sat down next to him on the couch. He placed the popcorn bowl in his lap and settled back against the cushions.   
  
He was laughing within the first ten minutes. She began to really notice the differences between his laughs. There was a light, but sharp exhale with an accompanying ‘heh’ when something was sort of funny; a range of slightly longer, shoulder shaking laughs when he thought something was funny; and her favorite, the laugh that made him double over or close his eyes, his entire body shaking as he roared with glee. She rewound parts of the movie three times just so he could see them and laugh again.   
  
About halfway through the movie, at no real significant point, John suddenly put his arm around her. She was surprised for a moment and then shifted closer, resting her head on his shoulder. He was warm and comfortable and she decided right then that she never wanted to move. Near the end of the movie, he shifted, leaning down to press his lips against the top of her head. Violet stilled, unsure how to respond. She felt him tense behind her and after a moment, she nuzzled his shoulder with her head to show him it was okay. He relaxed, arm tightening around her, and she felt him smile against her hair.   
  
When the movie was over and Santa and Christmas had been saved, John laughed quietly. “Not bad at all, that. Actually, it was pretty good.”  
  
She grinned. “Told you. There’s a sequel, you know.”  
  
“Really?” He perked up and looked at her DVD shelf. “Do you have it?”  
  
She made a face. “No.”  
  
“Oh. One of those rubbish sequels?”  
  
“Kind of. It’s a lot about the Mrs. Clause. C-l-a-u-s-e. He has to find a wife. But the villain is ridiculous and Charlie turned into a delinquent.”   
  
John arched his eyebrows. “Really? …I’d still like to see it.”  
  
“I don’t have it. I could always get it from Blockbuster next time you come over. If you want to, I mean.”   
  
He smiled and leaned down, resting his forehead on hers. “So is that an invitation?”   
  
“Mmhmm.”  
  
“Well, what if I invited you over to my flat instead and got the DVD myself?”  
  
“That depends. Who’s cooking?”  
  
“I’ve got some delicious TV dinners and a tub of casserole.”  
  
Violet smiled. “Or…we could order pizza.”   
  
“That’s a brilliant idea. Pizza and a movie at my place. How does Friday sound?”  
  
“Not tomorrow?”  
  
“Banquet dinner for the hospital.”  
  
“Oh, right. We’re still going together, right?”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“Good. Friday it is, then.” She grinned again and he bumped her nose playfully with his.


	44. The Family of Blood

  
  
\---

  
Natalie was late to work.   
  
Natalie was _never_ late to work. She had punctuality down to an art. She’d only been sick once in the entire time Rose had been there and she’d given notice before Rose had even woken up. But today she simply wasn’t to be found anywhere. Their supervisor tried to get ahold of her but she didn’t answer so they called in one of the guys who usually worked the evening shift. His name was Duncan and she’d spoken to him briefly sometimes when they changed shifts but she didn’t know him well.   
  
Rose text Natalie several times throughout the morning to no avail and called her when she got a chance to go to run to the bathroom. No answer. While she was on her lunch break, she gave Aiden a call to see if he knew anything but he hadn’t seen her. He offered to come in and work the rest of her shift.   
  
“No, no, they called in Duncan.” Rose assured him.   
  
_“The Texan?”_  
  
“Yeah. Well, I don’t know if he’s from Texas, but he’s got a thick accent.”  
  
 _“Yeah, that’s him. Blonde guy. Nice guy until you give him a few beers then he’s kind of an asshole. A drunk man’s words are a sober man’s thoughts so keep an eye on him at all times.”_  
  
Rose smiled. Aiden really was a great guy and she had the feeling he’d do well with intergalactic travel. She ought to check on him whenever they got around to taking Martha home since aliens were becoming general knowledge by then. “I will. But could you swing by Natalie’s house and see if she’s there? I’m getting worried.”   
  
_“Can do.”_  
  
“Ta. Call me when you find her. Bye.” She slid her phone shut and set it down on the table. She sighed propped her chin on her fist, staring down at her food. She still had fifteen minutes left before her break was over and if she didn’t eat now she’d be starving by dinner but her appetite was gone. Life with the Doctor, however, had taught her that it was best to eat when given the opportunity because you never knew when you’d be on the move again.  
  
 _Like this is anything like our other adventures,_ she thought irritably as she picked up her fork and stabbed it into her taco salad. She wouldn’t be running for her life anytime soon, especially if she didn’t find the watch.   
  
She was highly considering bringing the scanner to the hospital with her and refining the search. Maybe there was a mode that would lead her right to the nearest source. No, wait. It would probably lock onto her artron signature rather than the watch unless…maybe she could somehow program the scanner to not track her signature. Ugh, this really wasn’t her area. The Doctor always did the technological work.  
  
Rose was still mulling it over when someone sat down in front of her. She looked up, expecting to see Martha since she was the only one who she ever ate lunch with, so it came as quite a shock when she saw Natalie sitting across from her. Her fork clattered to the plate.  
  
“Oh my God! Natalie! Where the hell have you been?” she exclaimed louder than she meant to. Glancing around to make sure no one was staring, she leaned closer to her friend. “Are you alright?”  
  
Natalie stared at her for a second, sniffed rather loudly, and then smiled. “I’m fine.”  
  
She narrowed her eyes. “You. Prat! I’ve been sittin’ ‘ere for five bleedin’ hours, worried about you! Thinkin’ you were in hospital as a patient or lyin’ dead in your flat! I just sent Aiden lookin’ for you! An’ now you tell me you’ve been perfectly fine this whole time? So what? Just thought you’d skive off work? Is that it?”   
  
It was only after she was finished ranting that she realized she’d slipped so deeply into her normal accent and vocabulary that it was like she’d never left the estate. Since she’d been here, Rose had made an effort to lean towards a more posh accent at work so people could understand her and she’d been using the terminology she’d learned from Aiden and Natalie. It’d been getting easier, too. Until now, at least, with the lack of sleep weighing heavy on her and the wave of anger coursing through her.  
  
“Couldn’t be arsed to pick up your phone, either, eh?” she added through her teeth.  
  
“You mean this?” Natalie produced her phone from her pocket. “It has been squawking and beeping all morning.”  
  
Rose stared at her for a few seconds. “Uh…yeah. That was all of us trying to get ahold of you. Are you alright?”  
  
“I told you I’m fine.”   
  
“Right…” she said slowly. “Hang on a tick.” She picked up her phone and hit redial. It rang twice.   
  
_“Aloha.”_  
  
“Aiden that’s not even from the right set of islands.”   
  
_“Really? Huh. Who’d a thunk it?”_  
  
Rose rolled her eyes. “Shut up, you. I found Natalie.”  
  
 _“You wha?”_  
  
“She’s sitting right in front of me in the cafeteria. She just sat down, calm as you please. Says she’s fine.”  
  
 _“…Yeah. I’m calling bullshit on that.”_  
  
“Agreed. I’ll let you know.”  
  
 _“You do that. Bye.”_  
  
Rose hung up and looked at the woman across from her critically. Her brown hair, usually smooth and straight, was mussed, what was left her makeup was smeared, her eyes were strangely intense, and she was still wearing her jacket.   
  
“Natalie, there’s something you’re not telling me,” she said.   
  
“I think I could say the same about you.” Natalie countered.   
  
“Why are you here? I mean you clearly didn’t want to come to work this morning.”   
  
“I wanted to eat lunch with you,” she replied with a too sweet smile that didn’t belong on her face. “So we could talk about all that traveling you do. I’m very eager to hear more about it.”   
  
Rose swallowed and forced herself to smile. “S-shall I go through the line for you? They’re serving pickled veal and deep fried jam.”  
  
Natalie leaned forward. “Sounds great.”  
  
 _You’re not Natalie._ Her hands clenched around her phone as she stared into her friend’s eyes. Something dark and sinister stared back at her from behind them.   
  
Rose had watched the video the Doctor left behind over a dozen times. She knew every word, ever pause, every smile, every frown. Every single fact he’d told them about the Family of Blood’s species zipped through her head at light speed. But the biggest one, how they survived, stuck out from amidst it all: they took over bodies and used the owner’s memories to make their way.   
  
Rose stood up and grabbed her purse. “A-and I then I want to tell you about the film I saw at the cinema last night.” She still half expected her terminology to be corrected. She forced herself to remain steady as she tucked her mobile into her pocket. “Oh, by the way, I saw Jim Carrey earlier. He said to tell you hello.”  
  
“That’s nice.”  
  
“I’ll be back in a mo. Watch my tray please?”  
  
The thing using Natalie’s body nodded and folded her arms on the table. Rose turned and headed for the direction of the food as quickly as she could without it seeming like she was trying to run. The moment she was around the corner she took off running, grateful she’d worn flats today. She had to get away and get away _now_. What happened in Cardiff had proven that they would attack in public with no care about bystanders being harmed in the process.   
  
She didn’t bother waiting for the elevator, flying up the stairs as quickly as she could. Her muscles ached from disuse and this damn skirt was not meant for running in. Bursting through the door to the fifth floor, she forced herself to slow to a brisk since this _was_ the pediatric floor. She had no idea where Martha was, of course, and she could run into John at any minute. Though she wasn’t sure the latter would be a bad thing at this point. If the Family was here then they needed to get the hell out. Of course they couldn’t do that without finding the bloody watch first!  
  
She managed to gasp out a question to a few med students and they pointed her in the direction of the patient’s lunchroom. Sure enough, Martha was in there. So was the blonde woman named Violet that had somehow captured John’s heart and Rose made a point to not look at her.   
  
“Martha!” she called.  
  
Martha’s eyes widened when she saw Rose coming and she glanced at Violet quickly.   
  
“Hi, Marion!” one of the children shouted.   
  
Rose stopped in front of Martha with her hands on her knees. Martha put her hand on her shoulder and whispered so the children couldn’t hear, “Rose, what–” she glanced at Violet again “–what are you doing up here?”   
  
She looked up. “They’re here.”  
  
She didn’t even need to elaborate. Martha’s eyes widened and her face drained of color. She swallowed and cast her eyes across the room. A lot of the children were staring at them and she figured Violet was, too. “Are you sure?” Martha muttered.   
  
“One of them took Natalie,” she hissed back. “She didn’t show up to work and wasn’t answering her phone but then she just showed up in the lunchroom and–I know Natalie. I know ‘er. That wasn’t Natalie. It looked like her but it weren’t.”  
  
Martha nodded, squaring her shoulders. “Do you know where the locker rooms are? Wait for me there.”  
  
“Hell no. We’re sticking together.”  
  
“Fine. Wait by the door.” Martha gave her a nudge in the right direction then headed over to Violet. Rose leaned against the wall outside of the room, glancing this way and that for any sign of Natalie. There were three other people in this town under their control and if the thing inside Natalie had figured out who Rose was then it was probably safe to assume they all knew as well.  
  
Martha emerged from the room and motioned for Rose to follow her. They stopped down at her locker so she could get out of her coat and grab her things. She handed Rose the spare jacket she kept in her locker and told her to put the hood up. Then they headed down the back stairs and out the ER entrance. They waited across the street from the bus stop, keeping their heads down until the bus arrived and then they ran across and boarded quickly.  
  
“Rose,” she whispered when they took their seats in the very back of the bus. “Do you have your deceiver on?”   
  
Rose pulled back her sleeve to show her the thin, silver bracelet that would hid her scent. “You?”  
  
“Ankle. No jewelry allowed at work.”   
  
“Good. So they can’t track us, at least.”  
  
“Does Natalie know where you live?”  
  
Rose’s eyes widened and she thought back, trying to remember if she’d mentioned that to Natalie. “N-no. I don’t think so. I don’t think I’ve told anyone, actually. You?”  
  
“No. Okay.”   
  
They kept their eyes on the other passengers but no one was paying any attention to them. Martha pulled the cord when they were close and the moment the bus stopped they were out the doors and running for their flat, weaving through the people and casting glances over their shoulders, and didn’t stop until they were safely inside.  
  
If inside could even be considered safe.  
  
“We need to get the hell out of here.” Rose said. “Start packing. We’ll drop stuff off at the TARDIS, get something we can fight with if the Family track us down, and find that bloody watch even if we have to tear the hospital apart.”  
  
For the first time in weeks she felt something through her link to the TARDIS. It came in waves. First, curiosity, then fear strong enough that Rose shivered, and finally a rush of pure unadulterated rage that made Rose dig her fingers into the wall and hiss through her teeth.   
  
“What’s wrong?”   
  
“TARDIS,” she spit out. _What’s happening?_  
  
The answering image was dim and a bit blurry since the TARDIS was still on emergency power, but she recognized Marc, the homeless man that lurked in the alley where the TARDIS had parked, standing in front of the ship with four figures wearing all black. The image faded followed by a flash of mauve.   
  
“Something’s wrong,” she managed. “There are these…things in the alley with Marc and the TARDIS. Then I saw mauve.”  
  
“That means danger, right?” Her eyes widened in horror. “Oh, oh _no_. They took him, too! That’s how Natalie knew who you were! I mean, they know there’s three of us, and think of what Marc knows about us? Once they realized he’d been living next to the TARDIS it would’ve been easy for them to figure out it’s us. They know our faces, our scents, and now they have our ship! What are we gonna _do?_ ” she shouted, sounding slightly hysterical.  
  
“Martha, calm down.” Rose ordered, seizing her friend’s shoulders.  
  
Martha buried her face in her hands and her body shuddered. A few seconds passed and Rose realized she was crying. She hugged her tightly and patted her back. “I’m sorry,” Martha apologized. “It’s just all happening so fast and Marc–Marc was my friend and…”   
  
“Natalie was mine. Hey, Martha,” she leaned back to look her in the eyes. “There might be a way to save them. The Doctor will know just as soon as we get him back. And we _are_ gonna get him back.”  
  
Martha nodded and wiped her eyes. “Right, yeah. We also need to guard John. Marc saw his face when he first left the TARDIS. I don’t think it’d be too hard to find that memory if they start looking. Which they will since they’re after him,” she added.   
  
“Does he work tonight?”  
  
“No. But he is going to that charity dinner they’re holding for the hospital at the convention center with Violet, I overheard them talking. Did you hear about it?”  
  
“Mm. Well, then, looks like you’re going to dinner, Martha, and I’m going to the hospital.”   
  
They hid in the apartment for the rest of the afternoon. They got their personal items packed and carried into the living room and worked on trying out refining the scanner. They managed to get it into a setting that pinged when in proximity to artron, automatically disregarding the wielder’s arton signature. Around six, Rose made dinner for herself and they watched the news. There was nothing in particular that stood out. No missing persons reports and she wondered who the other two members of the Family had taken as hosts. After the news was over, Martha disappeared into her room to get ready for the dinner.   
  
Rose, meanwhile, changed out of her work clothes into a red long sleeved t-shirt, a black jacket, jeans, and a pair of trainers. Good to run in and she wouldn’t stand out from the crowd. She also wiped off her makeup and reapplied it in a less professional way, adding on amounts of eye makeup she hadn’t bothered with for months and a light pink lipstick. She brushed her hair out but otherwise left it alone. She didn’t wanting anyone to recognize her unless they got close enough to look.   
  
She tucked the scanner and a pair of plain blue scrubs into a drawstring bag and placed the sonic and the psychic paper in her pockets. Then she waited in the living room for Martha.   
  
When she finally emerged from her room, she was wearing a short-sleeved black party dress that fell to her knees, with black boots that didn’t _quite_ go with the dress but they’d agreed when picking out the outfit they weren’t going to take any chances. She had to be able to run fast just in case. Besides, she could always say it was the current fashion in London. Her hair was pulled up into a ponytail, she wore her olfactory deceiver on her wrist, and her TARDIS key around her neck.   
  
Martha nodded, Rose smiled tightly, and they headed out. They rode the bus together to the hospital. Martha would continue on to the hub in the middle of the city and switch busses to reach the convention center.  
  
“Call me when you find it,” Martha ordered.  
  
“Call if you run into trouble,” Rose countered.  
  
“Good luck.”  
  
“You too.”  
  
Martha watched her go until she was inside the hospital and the bus had moved on. She silently prayed to whoever may be listening that this would work.  
  
Half an hour later she was walking into the convention center. She was directed to Hall A by a kind woman in all black who’s smile was too kind for her to be possessed. Rose had described the dark, almost wild look behind Natalie’s eyes and the way she stared intently.   
  
Immediately upon entering the hall she started scanning the crowd for John or Violet. The room was nicely decorated, she noted. White lights hung from the ceiling, twinkling merrily. At least fifty tables were placed orderly around the room with white tablecloths and deep crimson napkins. There was a stage at the front of the room with a podium. A cheery orchestral track played overhead while a slideshow slowly flicked by onscreen showing the faces of healthier patients, happy children at play, smiling doctors, the hospital logo, and a few shots of doctors or nurses with patients, along with positive quotes and testimonies.   
  
A few of her peers that were attending said hello and a few obviously rich people eyed her simple dress with something like distaste. After walking around the room for a minute or so she finally found them sitting together at table 10.   
  
Violet had her blonde hair pulled into a low bun and she wore a sleek blue one-shoulder dress. John had on a black suit. They were quite a pair Martha had to admit. And of course they had eyes only for each other. She’d been in doubt about whether or not they were in love yet (and it was a matter of if, not when, she’d known for a while now) but she was quickly realizing just how far gone they both were. That made what had to be done so much harder. She didn’t want to hurt them.   
  
She steeled herself then headed to their table. “Any empty seats?” she asked with a hopeful smile.  
  
They tore their gazes away from each other and their eyes widened in surprise at the exact same moment. It was comical. “Martha!” John exclaimed. “I thought you were dealing with an emergency?”   
  
“I was,” she sank into the empty chair next to him, propping her elbow up on the table, and leaned her head into her hand. “My flat mate’s boyfriend got himself in a spot of trouble and he was hurt. I had to go help him.”  
  
“He couldn’t come to the hospital?”   
  
She shook her head. “He’s got no insurance. The American healthcare system is rubbish like that.”  
  
“Is he alright?” Violet asked.  
  
“He will be, yeah, and he’ll be with us again after tonight.”  
  
“I’m glad to hear.” John replied.  
  
“Thank you so much for covering for me.”  
  
“No trouble at all.”   
  
Martha licked her lips and looked away from him, staring down at her plate. “Except…”   
  
“What?”  
  
“I won’t be here much longer.”   
  
“ _What?_ ”  
  
“We’re leaving, me an’ my friends. Very soon.”   
  
“But–but you’re in the middle of your studies!” Violet protested. “You can’t just leave.”   
  
Martha looked up at them both sadly. “I’ve got to. They’ll be going and I’ve gotta go with them.”  
  
“No, no you don’t.” Violet argued. “John, switch me seats.”   
  
John was surprised but he did as she asked. She leaned close to Martha, with her hands in her lap. “Martha…” she began quietly. “The way you’ve talked about them. They’re happy so you’re happy. One of them was in trouble so the other one came and dragged you away from work to help. Now they’re leaving so you have to as well? Tell me the truth. Do they… are they _making_ you go with them?”   
  
Martha’s eyes had been steadily growing wider until she was sure they were about to pop out of their sockets. “No! Oh my God, no! No, no, no, no. It’s not like that at all. I’m perfectly fine.”  
  
“So they haven’t got something on you? You’re not being forced?”  
  
“ _No,_ ” she replied. “I _want_ to go with them. It’s like…. When you were a kid, did you ever imagine about running away to somewhere fantastic, just for the fun of it? Just for the adventure? Or just because it was out there and you could? That’s why I’m with them. They offered me the entire world and beyond. How could I say no?”  
  
“But I don’t understand.” John interrupted. “You make it seem like you’ve been travelling with these friends of yours for a while now. Aren’t you in the middle of school?”  
  
Martha looked down at the salad on her plate. “Yes and no. It’s a bit…complicated. I… Oh, where do I even start?” she said helplessly to the lettuce. “We always planned to do this together and I’m not even sure how to on my own. I like you both and I want you to be happy. I do, I really do, and I wish you could be.”  
  
Violet sighed, annoyed now. “What the hell are you talking about?”   
  
Martha looked at them again. She had to tell them. As soon as Rose showed up with the watch they had to be able to get up and go, that was the plan. But she had no idea how to even go about this. At best they’d think she was a nutter.  
  
“John, you know those dreams you have?” she began.   
  
Suddenly several of the doors around the room burst open, smacking against the door with bangs that resounded through the room. There was a sound like laser fire and people started screaming. Martha leaped to her feet and looked around for the source of the fire. At least thirty figures covered in black from head to toe swarmed into the room like shadows, cutting off escape. People fled from them, crawling under tables and dropping to the floor. The laser went off again, firing a shot at the ceiling, and the music cut out.   
  
“EVERYONE. WILL. BE. SILENT.” A man’s voice roared and Martha followed the sound to a group of people standing in the doorway wearing clothes not at all suited for a banquet. One of them was Marc.  
  
Martha rounded on John. “Get under the table!” she hissed.   
  
“I SAID SHUT UP!”   
  
Martha reached into her small purse and pulled out her phone to call Rose. No signal. She cursed under her breath. All around the room, people were ducking behind and under tables for cover. Martha lowered herself to the ground and joined John, Violet, and an elderly couple under the table. The couple were clinging to each other in terror and the older woman seemed to be fumbling with an inhaler.   
  
For a moment, it was utterly silent except for the faint terrified whimpers of the guests.   
  
“JOHN SMITH, SHOW YOURSELF.” Not-Marc roared.   
  
Martha looked at John fearfully. He was pale and clinging to Violet desperately. “M-me?” he whispered to no one.   
  
She nodded. “I’m so, so sorry. We tried.”  
  
“What–”  
  
“SHOW YOURSELF NOW OR WE WILL START KILLING PEOPLE.” An adolescent voice added. “IT DOES NOT MATTER TO US IF THEY ALL DIE.”  
  
John exhaled shakily and clung tighter to Violet.  
  
“VERY WELL, THEN.”  
  
Something banged loudly and a few people screamed in fear. A few laser blasts followed and the screaming abruptly ended. The sudden silence was even more horrifying. There was another bang and more screaming and desperate pleading and John shoved Violet away from him, lunging out into the open.  
  
“Stop! _STOP!_ ” he cried desperately. “I’M HERE!”  
  
Martha took a deep breath and crawled out from underneath the table and stood next to him. John tried to nudge her back down but she remained firm, glaring venomously at the Family of Blood. Marc, Natalie, a teenage boy with short brown hair and baggy clothes, and a little Asian girl with a purple backpack walked towards them, each holding a strange looking gun, with a few of the black figures accompanying them.   
  
“Well, well, well,” the boy chuckled when they came to a stop. “Look what we have here. You were right, Father of Mine. And look, he has one of the females to guard him.”  
  
Not-Marc sneered at Martha and her glare hardened. “What happened to Marc? Is he gone?” she demanded.  
  
“Oh, yes,” Not-Marc chuckled. “And his body is mine.”  
  
Martha closed her eyes for a moment and fought back the rising wave of sadness. Poor Marc. Killed for his knowledge with his body left as a meat suit for his killer. But there wasn’t time to mourn now. The sadness morphed into anger and she clenched her fists. They would pay for this. They would not take the Doctor.   
  
“We have a few questions for you, Dr. Smith.” said the boy. “Or…should I just call you _Doctor_? You took human form, how clever of you.”  
  
“Of course I’m human!” John sputtered. “What is going on? Who are you people?!”  
  
“And a human brain, too!” the boy was amused. “Simple, thick, and dull.”  
  
The little girl laughed once.  
  
“He’s no good like this,” hissed Not-Natalie.  
  
“We need a Time Lord,” Not-Marc–or, rather, Father, agreed.   
  
“Easily done.” Stepping forward, the boy (Son?) raised his gun and pointed it at John’s head. John recoiled. People watching gasped and Martha stiffened, ready to defend him. “Change back, Doctor.”   
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” John protested.   
  
“Change back!”  
  
“I literally do not know–” he started to shout.  
  
Not-Natalie (Mother?) moved too quickly for Martha to respond. She hooked one arm around Martha’s throat and pointed the gun at her head. Martha screamed in surprise and struggled. “GET OFF ME!”   
  
“She's your friend, isn't she?” Mother demanded. Doesn't this scare you enough to change back?”  
  
“I don't know what you mean!” John shouted at her. “Change back into _what_?!”   
  
“Wait a minute,” Father interrupted. He closed his eyes and his skin seemed to glow with a strange green light. “This body has memories of a conversation…about John and a woman called Violet.”   
  
Violet gasped quietly underneath the table and Father lunged forward, flipping the table with his hand. The old woman screamed as the three of them were suddenly exposed and her husband threw his arms in front of her protectively. Father seized Violet by the arm and hauled her to her feet, pulling her away from John. She struggled the entire way.   
  
John looked between his two trapped friends, terrified, his chest heaving. Most people had taken shelter around them, listening to the scene, though a few brave souls had peeked out to have a look. Dozens of them were undoubtedly trying to call for help and waiting to run but the black figures still guarded the doors.   
  
“Have you enjoyed it, Doctor? Being human?” Son asked. “Has it taught you wonderful things, are you better, richer, wiser? Then let's see you answer this: which one of them do you want us to kill?”  
  
Martha gasped and started struggling again but Mother tightened her grip.   
  
“Med student or doctor? The alien or the human? Your friend–or your lover? Your choice.”  
  
He looked between them both desperately. Amidst her struggles, Martha gazed at John sadly. She knew who he’d pick and it wasn’t her.   
  
“Make your decision!” Mother sneered.   
  
“Perhaps if that human heart breaks the Time Lord will emerge,” Son mused.   
  
There was a loud bang across the room along with a few screams and the sounds of scuffle. Martha briefly glimpsed a table being overturned and a few men wrestling with some of the figures near the door. Mother’s grip loosened and Martha flew into action. Remembering what Rose had taught her, she elbowed Mother in the gut with her right elbow, grabbing the gun out of her hand with her left, and then reached up and grabbed her arm. She ducked underneath, twisting the arm behind Mother’s back, and held the gun at Family.   
  
“RIGHT!” she shouted. “One more move, and I shoot.”   
  
“Oh, the alien girl is _full_ of fire!” Son spat.   
  
“And you can shut up!” She snarled back and fired the gun at the ceiling. People screamed.  
  
“Careful, Son of Mine,” Father cautioned. “This is all for you so that you can live for ever.”   
  
“I’ll shoot you down.” Son raised his gun and pointed at her.   
  
Like that was supposed to scare her off? “Try it,” she dared. “We’ll die together.”  
  
Son stared at her, assessing. “Would you really pull the trigger?” he wondered.   
  
Martha pursed her lips. Could she? She’d killed before on their travels out of necessity. She’d killed things that had been human and things that had never been human but only when it was life or death. She did not remotely enjoy it but she had learned that sometimes it had to be done. If not for her sake then for the sake of everyone, like in Manhattan with the Pig Men. It was the Family or everyone here.   
  
“Looks too scared,” Son decided.   
  
“Scared and holding a gun. It’s a good combination. You wanna risk it?” She challenged, pointing the gun at his chest.   
  
Son stared at her, then he looked over at John for a long moment, and then he lowered his gun. The other members of the Family did as well and Violet yanked herself away from Father and skittered back over to John.   
  
Martha glanced at them. “Get everyone out through the kitchens. Go now.”  
  
John stared at her in fear, still reeling from all that’d happened in the span of a few minutes. Violet, though she was afraid, squared her shoulders and raised her voice. “EVERYBODY OUT!” she shouted. “OUT THROUGH THE KITCHENS. GO NOW.”   
  
No one needed to be told twice. Dozens of people emerged from under tables and chairs, some from the restrooms, behind the bars, and one man from behind the podium. The distinct lack of police sirens outside made Martha wonder if they hadn’t done something to the phone service so no one could call for help. It would make sense but how far did this new air pocket stretch? Just the building? A few blocks? The entire city?   
  
John was moving finally, ushering the terrified elderly couple from table 10 towards the doors. It took about a minute to get everyone out. Martha, meanwhile, was in an intense staring contest with the Son. He continued to asses her with his piercing gaze, smirking slightly. She scowled determinedly and dug her nails into Mother’s arm, causing her to wince slightly.  
  
When most of the humans had escaped, John stood on the other side of table 9, presumably to make sure she got out as well. Her heart went out to him but she couldn’t lose their only advantage until he was safe.  
  
“And you,” she told him, still staring at the Son. “Go on. Just shift.”  
  
“What about you?” he asked.  
  
“I know what I’m doing, John. Get out with Violet.”   
  
He looked between her and the door for a moment, torn, before he swallowed, nodding, and ran. When the last of the people were out and it was just Martha, the Family, and the fifteen figures, she started edging towards the door. She pulled Mother with her as a shield and they followed her slowly. When she was away from the tables and close enough to run for it, she let go of Mother, shoving her at her family. Father immediately raised the gun but she leveled it at Son once again, this time with both hands.   
  
“Ah, ah! Don’t try it. I’m warning you, or sonny boy gets it.” She continued to inch back.  
  
“She’s almost brave, this one.” Son sneered and they continued their advance.  
  
“I should’ve taken her form,” Mother agreed. “Much more fun. So much spirit.”   
  
“I _will_ kill you,” Martha warned. “The last few months are all because of you four. All those people in Cardiff that you killed, the hearts you’ve broken. And these four you took over. Mar was my friend.”  
  
“ _Mar_ ,” Father sneered. “You know why this body is mine? Because he came to us! He wanted to protect you and repay you for kindness. Foolish creature. He wanted to be a hero, just like you. Now you’ll pay as well.”  
  
Martha was seized from behind and she screamed, jerking her head away from the hand trying to cover her mouth. Son shouted something and the gun was snatched from her hands. She shoved against the black figure and made a run for the door.   
  
Bursting into the kitchens, she was grateful for the boots Rose had insisted she wear as she weaved amongst the shelves, counters, and carts, leaping over fallen utensils and food. She wasn’t sure if they were following her as it was difficult to hear over the humming of the machines and shrieking of finished timers. She looked back once and didn’t see them so she could only hope they hadn’t deemed her worth the effort at the moment.   
  
She was already working on a way to track down John when she emerged from the kitchens and found him standing there with Violet and a few other stragglers in the parking lot.  
  
“Don’t just stand there! MOVE!” she screeched at them, John in particular. “God, you’re rubbish as a human! Come on!”   
  
She took off running and, thankfully, John and Violet followed her. “We have to get far away from here, now!”  
  
“Wait! We can take my car!” Violet called. “This way!”   
  
She veered off to the side, pulling John with her. Martha swerved around, easily catching up with them. Violet unlocked the doors and they piled inside quickly, Violet and John in the front and Martha in the back. But she could hear panicked shouting and laser fire and knew the Family had emerged and were attacking. The police would undoubtedly be arriving soon. Guns and police versus lasers and a small army of aliens.   
  
They made it out of the parking lot with surprisingly little difficulty. Apparently most people had opted to leg it rather than try for their cars. Martha ordered to keep the windows up and the heater off. “They’re hunters,” she explained. “They track through scent and now that they have yours, they’ll be able to find you. You too, Violet.”  
  
“And you?” Violet asked.  
  
“No, I’ve got this–oh!” She gasped and slipped the deceiver from her wrist. “John, give me your hand. Now!” she barked when he hesitated.   
  
He twisted in the seat and held out his arm. She slipped the silver deceiver onto his wrist. “It’s called an olfactory deceiver. I’ve been wearing it since we arrived. It literally cancels out my scent. God, the amounts of perfume I’ve had to wear. You wouldn’t believe just how sensitive our noses actually are. It weirds people out when you don’t supply information to all the five basic senses.”  
  
Already it was mildly unsetting to be near him.   
  
“Mad,” he said.   
  
“No…no I can…” Violet trailed off and licked her lips. “I think I know what she means.”  
  
“A little nagging in the back of your head, right?” Martha asked. “Something telling you he’s not quite right?”  
  
Violet pressed her lips together, glancing at them out of the corner of her eye, and nodded. The ride continued on in silence for a minute.  
  
“What…was…that?” John finally whispered. He swallowed thickly and continued on, his volume rising. “Who were they? Why did they want me? What have I done?”  
  
Martha gulped. She had to explain now.   
  
“You know something,” he accused harshly. “You were about to say something before they burst in. The things they said to you… They called you an alien.”  
  
“I…I’m human,” Martha said. “Those hunters are alien parasites. They sought out hosts when they landed and one of them, the man, was a friend of mine who thought I was an alien. He wouldn’t believe us when we tried to tell him we were human so we just stopped trying.”   
  
“Why? And what did they want with me?”  
  
“I… It’s difficult to explain.” she licked her lips. “First, though, we need to find a place to hide. Some place safe.”  
  
“My flat?” John offered.  
  
Martha shook her head quickly. “No. They may not be able to track you now but they trace your scent back to your flat. And your house, too, Violet, since he was just there. Anywhere you’ve already been they can find. My flat’s going to be the safest.”  
  
“Where is it?”   
  
“Two blocks East of John’s. So head there and I’ll tell you how to go from there.”   
  
Violet nodded and turned left at the next light. Martha sighed and leaned back into her seat, closing her eyes, and worked on calming her racing heart. The adrenaline was tapering off finally, but her limbs tingled with energy and she was ready to move at a moment’s notice. She pulled out her phone to call Rose again but there was still no signal. Did they kill all the phone service in the city?  
  
John’s voice broke the silence. “How do you know where my flat is?”  
  
Martha inhaled slowly through her nose, exhaling through her mouth. She took her time putting her phone away and zipping her purse. When she couldn’t put it off any longer, she clasped her hands in her lap, and spoke as matter-of-factly as she could. “We’ve been monitoring you since day one. We had to know where you were going to be living and working and all that so we could protect you in case those aliens came after you.”  
  
Violet laughed derisively. “So are you from the government or something? Are you Agent J? Or, no–Agent M?”   
  
“I’m not from the Men In Black.” Martha rolled her eyes at the irony of that. “Let’s just start at the beginning, okay? I think that’ll be easier for all of us.”  
  
“Fine. From the beginning, then.” John said.  
  
“Alright. My name Martha Jones and I’m a companion of the Doctor.”  
  
John blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”  
  
“I…know about the dreams you’ve been having. I’d suspected and Violet sort of confirmed it without meaning to. The Doctor left behind a video of things to watch out for, general rules, and information on the process. He mentioned there would be some knowledge left behind, hidden away in the subconscious. Something as powerful as that, I figured it’d manifest in John’s dreams.”  
  
“What are you talking about?” he demanded.   
  
“Do you ever get the feeling we’re old friends?” Martha asked. “Something in the back of your mind that says you can trust me? That I should be around you?”   
  
John opened his mouth and closed it almost immediately. He swallowed. Nodded.   
  
“He called it ‘residual awareness’ and said you’d have enough of it left to let me in. You’re not John Smith. You’re the Doctor.”  
  
Violet swerved the car sharply over to the curb and slammed on the brakes. She put the car into park and twisted in her seat. Both of them stared at her with a mix of incredulity, disbelief, and anger. Martha, only slightly intimidated by their gazes, lifted her chin and sat up straighter.   
  
“I’m the Doctor’s companion and your guardian. It was my job to protect you so we watched you for the first week. Then we settled as close to you as we could without being in the same building and we got jobs in the hospital near you.”  
  
They stared at her in silence. She looked between them calmly and waited for them to react.  
  
“We?” John finally asked.  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“You said ‘we.’ Who else is in on this?”  
  
“I-In on? No one’s in on anything!” She slapped her forehead with her hand. “Damn it, John, I’m completely serious about all of this! You saw what happened back there! You think that was a hoax?! People died! You heard them! The Family–those four people with the guns–they kept calling you Doctor, remember? Not the title, the name. They’re after the Doctor and if they find us we’re dead so keep driving, Violet!” she snapped.  
  
Violet jumped in surprise but turned around and did as she was told. Martha exhaled sharply through her nose and leaned back into her seat.   
  
John exhaled loudly and rubbed his temple. “You expect me to believe that my dreams–the Doctor, the sonic screwdriver, the ship, Daleks, Cybermen, all of those companions–they’re real? All those things actually happened?”  
  
“Yes.”   
  
“So if the story’s real then what does that make me?”  
  
“…I–you’re–”  
  
“Don’t you dare,” Violet growled suddenly. “Don’t you _dare_ say he’s just a story.”  
  
Martha shut her mouth so quickly that her teeth met with an audible click. Time to try something new. “They’re called the Family of Blood. They’re hunters. They found us at a medical convention a few months ago and they’ve been after us ever since. We had the option to run or hide. We tried to run but they found us again so we had to hide. The Doctor used a machine called the Chameleon Arch to rewrite his entire biology, transfer his consciousness into a fob watch, and create a human persona to fill its place: you.”  
  
“No,” John whispered. “N-no. It can’t be. _I_ can’t be… I’m human! I’m real!! I-I remember growing up! I remember my childhood!”  
  
“The TARDIS–that’s what the ship’s called–it found a place for you in time and created the appropriate background for you. Don’t ask me how because I have no idea.”  
  
“No! I was born in Nottingham, I lived there until I was ten, then we moved to London for my mother’s job.”  
  
Martha shook her head. “You were created ten weeks ago in the console room of the TARDIS. I watched it happen.”  
  
“Stop it.”  
  
“From start to finish, I watched it all. I removed the watch from the Arch when it was all over and I could feel him in there.”  
  
“Stop it.”  
  
“And you were lying on the floor with your head in her lap and–”  
  
“ _I said stop_!” he shouted. Martha fell silent and simply stared at him. John turned away, shaking his head, and stared out the window at the city.   
  
Martha sighed heavily once more. “Turn left here, Violet.”  
  
The rest of the ride was tense and silent. When they arrived at their apartment complex, she instructed Violet to park at the opposite end of the street. She exited first, looking around for any sign of the figures hiding in the shadows, before motioning for them to follow. She led them through the cars and buildings and then down the hall to the flat. She bolted the door behind them quickly and ushered them into the living room.  
  
“Have a seat if you want. But keep the lights off.” Martha rummaged through her suitcase and pulled out a shirt and a pair of jeans. “Violet, you should change clothes. I can’t hide your scent but if you wear something of mine, it might blot out yours just enough to confuse them. Bathroom’s the second door on the left.”   
  
Violet accepted the clothes wordlessly and headed for the bathroom, leaving John and Martha alone in the room. He sat stiffly on the couch, looking around the room slowly.   
  
“You’re packed,” he noted after a minute of tense silence.   
  
“We were planning to run tonight. But then something happened to the TARDIS. We can’t get to her. We were hoping the Doctor would have a plan.”   
  
He hid his face in his hands. “I don’t want this. I’m John Smith. That’s all I want to be. Why can’t you just _let_ me be him?”  
  
“I’m sorry.” Martha sank down next to him. “Believe me, I am so, _so_ sorry. I never wanted to hurt you. You’re my friend. _You_ , John. Not just him. But we need the Doctor and in order for him to come back–”   
  
“I have to go, right?” John buried his face in his hands and his entire body trembled. He jumped to his feet abruptly and rounded on her. “So what am I then?” he demanded loudly. “I thought _he_ was the story but if he’s not then that means I am, right? RIGHT?”  
  
Martha stared at him sadly.   
  
Violet returned with her clothes and shoes. Martha beckoned her into the kitchen and ordered her to place them in the sink. She plugged the drain then pulled the bottle of bleach from underneath the sink. “Sorry about this,” she said before pouring the bleach all over it. “I’ve got to kill the scent on this as best as I can.”   
  
She used her hands to knead the bleach into the fabric. Violet stood nearby, watching wordlessly. She seemed to be deep in thought. “So you’re a time traveller.”  
  
Martha nodded.  
  
“Where are you from?”  
  
“London,” she replied, “circa 2008.”  
  
“But that’s that so close!” she exclaimed.   
  
Martha smiled shrewdly and turned around, holding her arms up so bleach didn’t get on her dress. “Thought I’d be from the far future or something?”   
  
“Well, yeah, I guess so. But what about the present-you–or, I mean, younger-you. Oh, man, this is hurting my head.”  
  
She laughed. “Oh, don’t I know it! The vocabulary alone is enough to do your head in. I get what you mean, though. The younger-me that belongs in this year is right where she should be. As long as we don’t physically touch each other, it’s fine.”  
  
“What happens if you touch?”  
  
“A paradox. I’ve been told those are incredibly bad. I’m trying to save the world, not get it destroyed.”  
  
Just like that, what little bit of humor that had been formed was sucked from the room, leaving the two women in tense silence. Martha turned around and resumed her work on the dress. Violet sighed heavily and Martha heard a creak as she leaned against the counter.  
  
“You’re going to take him from me.” It wasn’t a question.   
  
“I have to. Besides, you’re not the only one that loves him.”  
  
Violet swallowed. “Are all of the dreams true?”  
  
“Should be. It’d be easier if I knew what was in that journal.”  
  
“So…that means _she_ is too?”   
  
Martha froze and slowly raised her head. This was the part she’d been dreading most with Violet. “Remember those friends of mine I mentioned? The ones I helped get to admit their feelings properly?”  
  
Violet’s mouthed opened into a little ‘o’ of understanding and she quickly covered it with her hand. She looked like she was going to be sick. She took a minute to compose herself and Martha went back to the bleach. In the living room she heard John turn on the telly.  
  
“Where is she?”   
  
“The hospital. Oh, which reminds me. I need to let her know where we are.” She washed the bleach off her hands and returned to the living room.   
  
She dug her phone out of her bag. Still no signal. Violet’s had no signal, either, and they had no landline. _Well this is just great. Now she has no idea where to find us!_  
  
John was watching the news. They were talking about the attack at the convention center. In the last twenty minutes, things had dissolved from an isolated attack to an all out war in the streets. The black figures were spreading throughout town, attacking everyone in sight. The police had mobilized and were fighting back. Unsurprisingly, some citizens were fighting along with them with everything from guns to bats.   
  
All the cellphones were down and many of the landlines, too, although radios were still working but who knew how long that would last?   
  
They cut to a reporter near the convention center who gave details she’d learned from someone who’d been inside at the dinner. All of a sudden, her words trailed off into a scream and she dissolved into thin air, revealing the Daughter behind her.   
  
Martha’s hand flew to her mouth. Violet gasped.  
  
 _“Come out, Doctor!”_ the Daughter shouted at the camera. _“Come out, come out wherever you are!”_  
  
Then she raised the gun and fired. The cameraman screamed in pain and the screen went dark for a moment before the now pale-faced anchorman was back.  
  
“Turn it off.” John rasped. “Turn it off now.”   
  
Martha seized the remote and pressed the power button. Walking over to the window, she peeked out between the blinds. The fighting hadn’t reached here yet but she could see a few people running in the opposite direction of the convention center and more than a few cars racing down the street.  
  
“I have to go back.” John said suddenly. “If I give myself over to them then all this will stop.”  
  
“No!” Violet grabbed his arm. “You can’t!”   
  
“I have to.” He cupped her face in his hands. “Don’t you see? If I don’t they’ll just keep killing and killing.”  
  
“Do you really think they’ll stop killing once they’re all powerful?” Martha asked scathingly. “The only way you can help is by becoming the Doctor again and getting us the hell out of here.”  
  
“So is that it, then? I’m supposed to just lay down and die for your precious Doctor?” He spat furiously.   
  
Martha swallowed and inhaled shakily. She was dangerously close to crying now. “Do you want to know one of the first real lessons I learned back when I first started traveling? It was when I was at home after a few trips with them, still deciding if I wanted to go with them as a proper companion.” John looked away but she could tell he was still listening. “It was at this dinner reception at this place where my sister worked. A scientist playing around with de-aging and stuff had accidentally mutated himself into a monster. The Doctor told us to get everyone out while he distracted Lazarus. I was ready to run with my family but Rose wouldn’t go.”  
  
John’s head swiveled sharply the name.   
  
“She said she was going back for him. I told her she’d get herself killed. But she didn’t care. She said she had to, because that’s how things were. That her death wouldn’t be meaningless so long as he lived. Because the Doctor has to survive, even if we don’t, because our lives mean nothing next to his. So, yes, I guess I always have expected you would just lay down and die for him.” She paused, swallowed. “Then Violet came along and she gave you a reason to live.”  
  
John looked down at Violet who smiled tenderly at him. She let them have their small moment before continuing on. “But the universe needs the Doctor more than she needs John.”   
  
“She’s right.” Violet murmured. “Remember all those things you told me? All those monsters out there that the Doctor defeats? All the times he’s saved our world and countless others? I’m not more important than them. I’m only a pediatrician.”  
  
John looked stricken at Violet’s sudden siding with Martha. “So what now?” he asked with a note of hysteria in his voice. “Are you going to make me him again whether I like it or not?”  
  
“When the Doctor became human, he took the alien part of him and stored it in a fob watch. Once we open it, he’ll be released and he’ll…reclaim his body, I guess.”  
  
“And what becomes of me?” She shook her head helplessly. He laughed bitterly. “I see. Well, where’s this blasted watch, then?”  
  
She looked down awkwardly. “I, um, I don’t have it,” she mumbled. “It was stolen a few days ago but we know where it is!” she added quickly. “It’s still at the hospital. We have this scanner that lets us track artron energy and we figured out from that. It won’t be long.”  
  
John was quiet for a long minute, staring at Martha. Finally he sank onto the couch with a heavy sigh. “I don’t want this,” he whispered to Violet as she hugged him. “I just want to be John Smith, with you.”  
  
She ran one hand up and down his back, cradling his head with her other. “I know. I want that, too, but…you have to do it.”  
  
“Aren’t I enough?”  
  
“Yes, you are, for me. You’re the most wonderful man I’ve ever met and not because you’ve saved worlds and travel through time. But because you’re _you_.”   
  
The doorknob rattled and they both fell silent immediately. The three of them looked at each other fearfully.  
  
“Have they found us?” Violet whispered.  
  
“I’ll…check. Stay here.”  
  
“Is there another way out?”  
  
“The window, but you’d have to break it and they’d hear that.” She crept into the hallway as the doorknob rattled again. She glanced back into living room and motioned for them to get down. They did, John sliding his body around so he was between Violet and the door.   
  
She heard the lock slide free and the door opened. The chain held firm, effectively halting the door. She tensed, expecting the door to be blasted off its hinges any second. Then she heard a familiar voice through the crack in door. “Martha, you there? Let us in, quick!”   
  
Martha flew for the door, removing the chain. “Oh you scared me to death!” she cried as she threw open the door. Rose stood there, sonic screwdriver in hand, smiling in relief. “I thought you were–”  
  
She trailed off when she realized Rose wasn’t alone. Standing in her shadow with his arm around her leg, wearing her red t-shirt for warmth, was Elliot Hunter.


	45. The Choice

  
The first thing Rose did upon entering the hospital was locate a place to change far from the desk where she worked. She managed to find a single person restroom without a security camera nearby and slipped inside to change into the scrubs. She tucked her clothes and jacket into her bag then headed up to the locker room that Martha used. She hid the sonic screwdriver into her bra and tucked her phone and the psychic paper, sans the carrying case, into her pocket. She turned on the scanner and switched to the mode that would alert her when in proximity to a source of artron.   
  
She stashed the rest of her stuff into Martha’s locker then headed back out onto the floor. Unfortunately, they hadn’t managed to find a mode that could give her precise directions towards any artron sources, so the only thing she could do was walk up and down the hallways and hope she got close enough to the watch for it to register. She felt like she was running a serious risk having the scanner out in the open but it wouldn’t fit in her pocket. The visitors and patients would write it off as just another medical device, it certainly looked like one, but it was the staff she was really worried about.   
  
She rode up to the tenth floor and started methodically making her way across it, one hall after the other. She made a point of not looking at it for too long and keeping it at about waist level as she moved up and down the halls. This way it appeared like it was important but she wasn’t drawing attention to it. It took about ten minutes to cover the top floor, she realized as she jogged down to the one below. This could take time. More than she had.  
  
Mid way through the eight, she started hearing people complaining about the mobile service in the hospital. A few minutes after she realized there weren’t any phones ringing, at all. Not even a chime. By the time she was done with that floor the scanner still hadn’t done more than chirp faintly once–which, she suspected, indicated she was standing about where it was on a different floor–and there was an announcement over the PA that the landlines were down.   
  
Rose frowned.   
  
Mid way through the seventh floor, she suddenly felt a strong rush of emotions from her link to the TARDIS, fear and anger at the forefront, along with an image of Martha, followed by one of the Doctor, then Natalie, and finally Marc. The ship’s song flittered around her mind, slow and quiet, but glinting with rage. She ducked into the nearest bathroom to collect herself and caught her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes were golden.   
  
That cinched it. John was in trouble. Major, life-threatening trouble, and it was because of the Family.   
  
Great. Now people were definitely going to stare at her. She’d have to keep her head down.   
  
When she was almost finished with the sixth floor–the scanner having beeped again in the exact same area but like the other floors, not loud enough for her to be on the right one–a woman came on the PA and paged several doctors and nurses down to the ER. Then she said that she’d been asked to inform everyone that phone service appeared to be down across the entire city.   
  
Rose quickened her pace. The entire city being robbed of it’s primary medium of communication when the Family were making their move on John was no coincidence. They must know enough about this time period to know the best way to keep them out of contact and confused was to remove the phones.   
  
It was on the fifth floor that the beeping really kicked up. It got louder and more insistent the closer she got to the wards where the long-term pediatric patents slept. So one of the children _had_ lied to her. She should’ve known.   
  
Finally, the scanner gave one last, sharp ping, and fell silent.   
  
Rose blinked at it in surprise then looked around but appeared to be alone in the hallway. She turned around and found herself looking down at a little boy. He was wearing a pair of blue pyjamas decorated with racecars, a pair of hospital socks, and a pale green bandana. He clutched a sketchpad to his chest and stared up at her in awe.   
  
It took her a second to place him. Really, it was the sketchpad that did it. This was the kid that had turned in her purse and given her the drawing of the wolf. Elliot.   
  
“ _You_?” she asked incredulously.   
  
He licked his lips but, of course, said nothing.  
  
“You took it?”   
  
He nodded and held out his arm. He angled it just _so_ and the fob watch slid out of his sleeve into his palm and he offered it up to her. With a gasp, she kneeled in front of him, setting the scanner aside, and accepted the watch. She felt the familiar grooves in the cover and the warmth from both the presence within and being kept in Elliot’s sleeve. _Rose_ … she heard it whisper.  
  
Elliot smiled.  
  
“But why? And why didn’t you return it?”   
  
He made a face and gestured to the watch then made the universal talking motion with his hand. She raised her eyebrows and then her eyes widened in realization. Of course, he must be the psychic. They’d been right; the Doctor had told him from within the watch to conceal him. But why from her? Why had he not wanted to be with her? Hadn’t he told her he felt better knowing she’d be guarding him?   
  
Rose swallowed, picked up the scanner, and straightened. “Do you know who I am?” she asked the boy.   
  
He nodded.  
  
“Was that wolf supposed to be me?”  
  
Bad Wolf, he mouthed clearly.  
  
Rose shook her head the tiniest bit. Time was short but she had to know. “What else have you drawn?”   
  
He started to open his sketchbook and she glanced around nervously, suddenly realizing how exposed they were, and motioned him out of the main hallway. He followed her obediently and when they were out of sight, he held out his sketchbook for her. She tucked the watch into her pocket and gave him the scanner to hold while she flipped through his work. Her amazement grew with every new page she saw.   
  
The sonic screwdriver, the TARDIS interior and exterior, Daleks, Cybermen, the gasmask zombies, Hervoken, Sycorax, Judoon, and other aliens, some she didn’t recognize; herself (frequently) Martha, Captain Jack, Sarah Jane, other people she didn’t recognized but assumed were companions; stars and planets, a nebula, and a collection of scenes. For him to have picked these images out of John’s mind and the watch, he was definitely psychic.  
  
There was one in particular that stood out to her. Ten separate faces on the same page, from young to elderly, some with pale hair and some with dark. They were each numbered. She recognized the two near the bottom labeled 9 and 10 and realized that these were the Doctor’s lives.  
  
“These are amazing,” she breathed in wonder. Elliot beamed with pride. She went back to the one of her as the Bad Wolf and her fingers brushed across her face on the paper. “I suppose I look a bit like that right now.”  
  
He nodded.   
  
Swallowing once, she returned the sketchbook to him. “Thank you for giving the watch back and letting me see your drawings, but I have to go now. He’s in danger.”  
  
Elliot nodded and pointed at her pocket where the watch was.   
  
“Yes, I’ve got to open it.”  
  
He shook his head and pointed again insistently.  
  
She thought about one of the other things in the pocket with her watch and pulled out the psychic paper. “Here, this paper is slightly psychic so it should work very well for you. It shows people what you want them to see and picks up on thoughts. Just think what you want to say and it’ll appear.”  
  
He took the paper from her, frowning in concentration. Almost immediately the words wrote themselves out on the paper. _Monkey butts_  
  
Rose rolled her eyes. Typical little boy.   
  
_Whoa cool  
  
Pie  
  
Tanks  
  
Yo yo   
  
Scooby Doo  
  
Macy  
  
Jumping Jacks.   
  
YEEHAAAAWWW LOOK AT MEEEE_  
  
“I’m kind of in a hurry,” she reminded him.  
  
 _Sorry  
  
Can you hear it? He keeps saying your name over and over_  
  
“No, I can’t. I heard him say it once when I first held it but that’s it.”  
  
 _Yes that’s when it started  
  
The watch knows where to go, it told me to find you and when you’d be here  
  
It knows where Dr. Smith is _  
  
“And so do I. Martha’s with them at the convention center.”  
  
 _No,_ the words appeared after a moment. _He’s not there  
  
They’re moving  
  
Going somewhere new  
  
I can take you_  
  
Rose balked at the suggestion. “B-but you’re a patient! I can’t just take you out of here!”  
  
 _You look like a nurse it won’t be weird if I’m with you_  
  
“Yeah, it will.”  
  
 _Then we’ll have to be careful  
  
You can’t find him without me _  
  
She licked her lips and looked him up and down. He didn’t seem to require any supports to be up and moving about, he had no oxygen tank or IV pole. He was very scrawny and pale so whatever was wrong with him was definitely taking its toll. He was bald, that meant some form of radiation. “Why are you in the hospital?”  
  
 _Leukemia_  
  
Rose nodded. She didn’t know much about leukemia, unfortunately, and without Martha to provide knowledge, she had no way of knowing of Elliot would be able to handle the excursion.   
  
He seemed to sense her doubts. _I’m gonna die anyway  
  
Please  
  
I’ve always been useless  
  
But I’m the only one who can help you_  
  
It was that last one that sealed the deal. He was right. Even if there was another psychic around she didn’t have time to recruit him or her and without the phones she had no way of finding Martha on her own. She groaned softly. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”  
  
She told him to hang onto the psychic paper but keep the front against his sketchpad so no one saw words appearing. He followed her down to the locker rooms and hid in the nearby bathroom while she grabbed her bag. She changed out of her scrub pants back into her jeans but left the t-shirt off so he could wear it when they got outside. She tucked her scrub shirt into her jeans and zipped her jacket over it. Now she could pass for his mother or maybe an older sister.   
  
She tucked the scanner and his sketchpad into it, slung it over her back, and headed to the bathroom. Glancing around to make sure no one was looking, she knocked on the bathroom door.  
  
He emerged and held up the psychic paper. _I hear the watch best when I’m holding it_  
  
So she gave it to him. He stood there for a moment, listening to it, then held up the paper. _It’s telling me how to get out of here_  
  
“Lead the way.”   
  
She remained tense the entire way through the hospital. They went in the opposite direction of the ER since that was where a stream of doctors and nurses were headed. They lingered near a side entrance, waiting for a chance to slip out, and Elliot listened intently to the watch. When he suddenly tugged on her arm she knew it was their chance and they all but ran from the hospital.   
  
She waited until they were out of the parking lot before wondering aloud, “Is it kidnapping if you left willingly with me?”  
  
He shrugged and then shivered.   
  
When they were out of sight of the hospital, she stopped and pulled out her shirt. He put it on and it fell clear to his knees. He handed her back the psychic paper but kept the watch in his hand. Next she gave him the backpack to put on so she could carry him piggyback style. He wasn’t very heavy.   
  
From her back, Elliot directed her by pointing his arm in the direction they had to go. In the distance she could hear sirens wailing and people screaming. All the vehicles that weren’t emergency services seemed to be moving in the opposite direction of the commotion. She wondered what was happening over there. Nothing good, obviously, and she’d bet her life it was the Family’s doing, but it didn’t sound like they were blowing anything up like they’d done in Cardiff.   
  
When they passed the alleyway where the TARDIS was, she couldn’t resist the urge to see what had happened. Peeking cautiously around the side, she glimpsed five figures covered from head to toe in black before quickly retreating. Those must be the Family’s minions. She had no idea what they were capable of, she was outnumbered, and she had Elliot to consider. There would be no reaching the ship for help.  
  
Ten minutes of walking later, she realized they were nearing John’s flat. She wondered if they’d gone there after running from the Family. But when Elliot directed her past the street his building was on, she realized that it would’ve been stupid for them to come here. If the Family had his scent, which they surely did by now, they’d probably posted guards the same way they had around the TARDIS.   
  
Had Martha led him to their flat, then? That seemed like the safest place right now.   
  
“Are we almost there?” she asked.  
  
She felt him nod.  
  
“I think we’re going to my flat,” she said. “It’d make sense for Martha to bring him there.” She adjusted her grip so she could slip the psychic paper from her pocket and hand it to him. He took it readily in his free hand. “How are you doing?”  
  
 _I’m cold_  
  
“I know, I’m sorry. But it’s really not much farther now. Hang on, Elliot.”  
  
 _I am  
  
Thank you, Rose_  
  
“No, thank _you_. I would’ve headed to the convention center and got caught up in…whatever’s happening. I don’t think I’d have ever gotten here in time.” _If at all_ , she added silently.   
  
There was definitely some sort of fight going on back that way. Sirens were wailing, people were screaming, something had already exploded, and she could hear the gunfire from here. It sounded like a warzone.   
  
She saw the psychic paper change out of the corner of her eye and glanced down at it again.  
  
 _Does that mean I saved you?_  
  
“Yeah, I think so.”  
  
 _And the Doctor?_  
  
“By extent.”  
  
 _Does that mean I saved the world?_  
  
She paused in front of a shop window so he could see her smile at his reflection. Briefly she noted that her eyes had returned to normal. “Yeah. Yeah, Elliot. You saved the world.”  
  
His answering grin was so full of joy that she felt her hardened heart soften and she smiled back at him.  
  
When they reached her apartment building, she set him down and took her backpack, the watch, and the psychic paper from him. She knelt down and readjusted her shirt so it was covering as much of him as possible. They headed down the hall together, her hand curled firmly around his, and they stopped at the same time outside the door to her flat.  
  
He pointed at the door and nodded.  
  
She hadn’t thought to bring her house key since they hadn’t planned on coming back without the Doctor. So she pulled out the sonic screwdriver and switched it to the right setting to unlock doors. The moment her hand was free he grabbed hold if it. She got it unlocked and he tried to open it but was almost immediately met with resistance. The chain must be on.   
  
“Martha, you there?” she called through the opening. “Let us in, quick!”  
  
Footsteps rushed towards the door and pushed it shut. “Oh you scared me to death!” The chain was unhooked and the door swung open, revealing Martha. “I thought you were–”  
  
Then her eyes found Elliot and her voice died in her throat. She gawked at him for a long minute. “B-but what’s he doing here?” she sputtered.   
  
“He’s how I found you. He’s the psychic,” she explained in a rush. “He had the watch this whole time. He’s also got leukemia and no shoes and he’s freezing so move out of the way.”  
  
That seemed to snap her into gear. She ushered them both inside quickly and shut the door.   
  
“Is he here?” Rose asked.   
  
“Yes, in the living room,” she responded quietly, leading them down the hall. “Violet’s here, too.”   
  
Rose rolled her eyes. She should’ve guessed his girlfriend would be with him. This was going to be awkward as hell. Elliot’s cool fingers tightened around hers but he’d stopped shivering. Rose hung back while Martha moved into the doorway.  
  
“Who’s out there?” Rose heard him ask.   
  
“Yeah, um. There’s…something I…” Martha sighed and looked up at Rose. “You know, I’m tired of explaining things. Just get in here,” she ordered before walking into the living room.  
  
Rose looked down at Elliot who nodded encouragingly and gave her a nudge. She took a deep breath and forced herself to take the final steps that would bring herself face to face properly for the first time with John Smith. He was sitting on the couch wearing a suit. Violet Lewis sat next to him in what looked like one of Martha’s shirts and a pair of jeans. They both stared at her, Violet with rueful understanding and John with complete and utter shock.  
  
“Rose?” he croaked. “Y-you’re–you’re Rose?”  
  
Rose nodded. “That’s me. Dame Rose of the Powell Estate.”   
  
His expression twisted into disgust. “You abandoned him.”  
  
She blinked. _That_ certainly hadn’t been what she was expecting. “Huh?”  
  
“The Doctor. You abandoned him.”  
  
“I never!” she growled. “It’s not my fault the watch got knicked. If anything, it’s your fault since I only dropped my purse because of you!”   
  
“That’s not what I meant! He sent you away, I know he did, but you didn’t come back. Why didn’t you come back? He was waiting for you! He was all alone!”  
  
Martha, seemingly unbothered by the conversation, was pulling a hoodie and a pair of socks out of Rose’s bag for Elliot.  
  
“I never left him! You don’t know what you’re talking about!” She took a step towards him. She could already tell this wasn’t going to go well. It seemed John had already come to terms with things but he was also frightened and angry and desperate. She should calm down and discuss this rationally with him but she was exhausted in every sense of the word and her temper had flared. “I came back the moment I–”  
  
“Oh my God!” Violet screeched causing them all to jump in alarm. She sprang from the couch, pointing at Martha who had knelt down next to Rose with the clothes. “Is that a patient?!”  
  
“Yep.”  
  
John blinked in surprise when he noticed the boy that emerged from behind Rose. “Who is that?” he demanded, squinting.   
  
She glanced down and realized he probably couldn’t make out the boy’s face in the dim light but the bandanna covering a small head was clearly visible. Martha helped him into the hoodie.   
  
“This is Elliot,” Rose responded. “I believe you know each other.”  
  
Violet looked ready to strangle her. “Are you insane? _You’ve kidnapped a cancer patient!_ ”  
  
“I did no such thing!”  
  
“He’s a minor and in the care of the hospital. You had no right or permission to take him off the premises. He’s weak enough as it is.”  
  
“Do you think I just wandered up to pediatrics and decided to snatch him?” Rose snapped. “He asked to come. We’d have never even gotten out if it weren’t for him.”  
  
“Of course he wanted to come. He hasn’t left the hospital for months! He’s just a child, he didn’t know this could very well be the death of him.”   
  
“He knew what was at stake just as well as I did. Just because he’s a kid don’t mean he’s stupid.” she retaliated. “And just because I haven’t got a degree don’t mean I’m an idiot. I kept him as warm as I could and I carried him most of the way. I did the best I could and we made it.”   
  
“But you still took him from the hospital!”   
  
“Okay, so maybe I did. What are you gonna do? Call the police? I don’t know if you noticed, Violet, but all the phones are down and there’s a bloody war goin’ on in the streets.” Rose took a step forward. “And let’s not forget that I don’t even belong in this time. Hard to jail someone who don’t exist.”  
  
Violet huffed loudly but didn’t argue further.   
  
“Elliot, come here,” John instructed and rose from the couch. “You should sit down.”   
  
Elliot shook his head and retreated behind Rose. She stood there awkwardly between the two of them for a moment before she shucked her backpack and set it on the floor then knelt down in front of him.   
  
“Hey, what’s wrong?”  
  
Elliot held out his hand and, digging it out of her pocket, she handed the psychic paper to him.   
  
_He scares me_  
  
“Why?” she asked.  
  
 _The Doctor scares me_  
  
“He’s not the Doctor yet,” she reminded him. “And even when he is I won’t let him hurt you. Not that he’d try. The Doctor likes you. That’s why he reached out to you.”  
  
“Elliot…you believe all this?” John asked.  
  
 _I believed before you did_  
  
Rose saw appear on the psychic paper but he didn’t hold it up for John to see.   
  
“Of course he does. Elliot was the one who took the watch from my bag,” she explained. “It’s been talking to him for days now. It told him how to find me tonight and it told him how to find you.”  
  
 _Give it to him_  
  
Rose withdrew the watch from her pocket and walked over to John, holding it out. “Take it,” she instructed.   
  
He shook his head. “No.”  
  
“Take it,” she repeated, sitting on the coffee table. The moonlight hit her face, illuminating it partially. Enough that he would be able to see her sincerity. “You have to.”   
  
His eyes roamed her face, taking her in, but he made no move to take the watch from her. “I saw you,” he said quietly. “There were so many faces and things but you were there the most. He loves you so much–I could feel it every time you were in the dreams. Every smile, every laugh, is for you. But when I look at you now I don’t feel any of that. I don’t want to make you smile. I don’t even want you near me. So how can I be him?”  
  
“You’re a stranger whose been walking about in the body of the man I love for the last three months.” Rose informed him coolly. “Why do you think you never saw me? I had to watch him become a new man once. I didn’t want to see a new man be him.”   
  
John’s mouth twisted grimly. “Touché.”   
  
Elliot suddenly let out a rasping wail of terror that had them all whirling around had even ended. A second later the world around them shook and an explosion erupted in the distance. Swearing, Martha made a run for the window and Rose had barely taken a step before Elliot’s arms were around her legs. She dropped the watch onto the table with a clatter and picked up the trembling child. As she carried him over to the window, another shock rippled through. Then another. “What’s going on?”  
  
Balls of fire were raining down on the city, one after the other striking in different points, seemingly at random. The emergency alert sirens began to wail and people screamed loudly from all around. They heard the thudding of footsteps from above them and the sounds of things falling or being pushed.   
  
The Family were getting desperate.   
  
“They’re–they’re destroying the city,” Violet said quietly.   
  
John whirled, lunging for the coffee table. “The watch!” he hissed, scooping it up. “That’s what they want!”  
  
“Don’t you dare!” Rose snarled, nearly dropping Elliot.   
  
“John…don’t,” Violet pleaded.   
  
John’s steps slowed and he focused on the watch cradled in his hands. Elliot straightened in Rose’s arms and stared at the two of them. She wondered what he was hearing. Without taking his gaze off them, he held the psychic paper up for Rose. _Can he hear it?_  
  
“Can you hear it?” Rose asked for him.   
  
John nodded ever so slightly. “He’s asleep…waiting to awaken.”   
  
_My mojo shows me things about people all the time but I never heard any voices  
  
How come I could hear him? _  
  
“If he’s asleep then how comes Elliot could hear him?”   
  
“Ooh, mid-level telepathic field. He was born with it.” John’s mouth was moving but that was _the Doctor’s_ voice coming through. The confidence, the swagger, the lazy way he rolled his vowels that John didn’t. Rose’s face lit up and she gasped excitedly. “That’s how he picked up on all the images from the dreams. It’s not too uncommon to find a human with low-level psychic talents but he is rather extraordinary for someone so–”  
  
John inhaled sharply and looked down at the watch in horror, then at the four people staring at him with varying degrees of delight and shock. His eyes were beginning to fill with tears, now confronted with absolute proof this was all true. “Is that how he talks?”  
  
“That’s him!” Martha said excitedly. “All you have to do is open the watch and he’s back!”  
  
Another explosion shook the flat, the hardest one so far, and the lamp on the table crashed to the floor. Rose set Elliot down on the ground so she didn’t accidentally drop him. John’s lower lip trembled and he looked between all of them with helplessness and anger, like he was looking for someone to blame. His glare settled on Martha.   
  
“You knew this all along but you watched us–you _helped_ us! Why?”   
  
“I didn’t know how to stop you!” she all but wailed. “The Doctor gave us a list of things to watch out for but that wasn’t one of them.”  
  
“Falling in love, that didn’t even occur to him?”  
  
She shook her head. “Of course not.”   
  
“He probably expected you to fall in love with me,” Rose explained. “Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t know what was going on until I saw you two together the other day and by then it was too late.”  
  
“I would’ve stopped you if I could’ve,” Martha defended. “But I couldn’t think of any way to do it that wouldn’t backfire. I couldn’t have you hating me.”   
  
“No, you needed me to trust you so I’d come with you willingly when it was time to go. What were you planning to do? Lure me away and then make me him again?”  
  
Rose sighed and answered for her. “We…planned to do it in the early hours of the morning or something. You would’ve gone to bed as John and woken up as the Doctor. No mess, no fuss.”   
  
John opened his mouth to say something cutting judging from the look on his face, but before he could, Elliot screamed in terror and they were all knocked to the floor from the force of an explosion that couldn’t have been more than two blocks away. The TARDIS sang in her head once more and Rose moved fast as a whip, catching Elliot before his head could crack against the table. The tiny psychic was panting and trembling and she could feel fear radiating from him waves.  
  
“Elliot? Look at me, sweetheart,” Rose ordered as she pushed herself to her knees. “How do your powers work? Can you see the future?”  
  
He held up the psychic paper and she saw a jumble of half completed words and shapes and colors as he struggled to organize his thoughts into something understandable. _Sometimes I know things that are about to happen_  
  
“Are we in trouble?”  
  
 _I don’t know I don’t–  
  
no no no no no it hurts no no no no no he’s still alive no no make it STOP MAKE IT STOP_  
  
Tears rolled down his cheeks and he let go of the psychic paper, clutching at his head, as a sob bubbled up. She held him tightly to her chest, rocking back and forth, shushing him. She had a good idea what was wrong with him and she wished she had the power to make it better. The only one that could, however, was still confined inside a fob watch.  
  
“What’s the matter with him?” Violet demanded.  
  
“It’s his telepathic abilities,” the Doctor’s voice answered once more. “Many humans have latent telepathic abilities and they’ll often manifest in times of extreme duress. Right now all the minds with the potential for telepathy are broadcasting and Elliot’s a receiver–NO!”   
  
John sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth and glared at the watch that was still gripped tightly in his hand. “No,” he growled at it. “You stay quiet. I’m _me_. This is my body and my voice is the only one speaking through it!”   
  
Martha’s eyes widened, Rose stiffened, and Elliot flinched at the sudden harshness in the human man’s voice. Even Violet shied away.  
  
He jumped to his feet looked at the four of them, eyes wild. “They want the Doctor? Well they can have him!”  
  
He started to go but before he could even get past the table, Rose sprang up from the floor and landed between him in the door. Eyes golden and blazing, fists curled, her entire body tense and ready to physically restrain him. She may not have had much of a prayer against the strength of the Time Lord but the human she could handle, of that she was sure.   
  
“Don’t. Even. Think. About. It.” she said quietly.   
  
“Rose, get out–”  
  
“NO! Look at me, John Smith. You see this?” she growled and pointed to her eyes. “You know what the Bad Wolf is?”   
  
“Yes.” He paused, his brow furrowing in confusion. “But he saved you from that.”  
  
“He did a shoddy job of it. The Bad Wolf’s still inside me and she’s awake.”  
  
John’s widened and she thought she heard Elliot gasp. Out of everyone in the room, she thought that little boy might be the only one who could really understand what that meant, especially if his powers were picking up anything from her.   
  
Another explosion.   
  
“Do you know why I became the Bad Wolf, John?” she asked.   
  
“To–to save the Doctor from the Daleks.”  
  
“The Bad Wolf exists to protect the Doctor and that’s what I’m going to do. Daleks, Cybermen, a sentient sun, the Family of Blood–no matter what it is, I’ll always fight for him, even if it kills me. And now here you are, John Smith. Threatening him.” Rose paused, letting the implications of that sink in. She didn’t look away from John but she could sense the new air of unease in the room.   
  
“You’re frightened,” she went on softly, but not unkindly, “and scared. You don’t want to give up this life or Violet and you’re desperate. I understand. But I won’t let you kill the Doctor.”  
  
“But you’ll kill me instead,” John replied harshly.  
  
That brought her up short. John wouldn’t die physically but he would cease to exist as he did now. To him that was as good as death. She didn’t want to kill him. She wanted to let John Smith stay with the woman he’d fallen in love with and be happy. If there were a way for it to be possible and still have the Doctor return then she’d do it for them. But she didn’t know of a way nor was there time to find one. She could just go and rip the watch from him and open it herself but she didn’t want to do that. She didn’t want it to end that way. She had to make him understand. If he was to go into this willingly, knowing exactly what his sacrifice was for, then he could die knowing his existence hadn’t been entirely in vain.   
  
Rose relaxed from her defensive position, uncurling her fists and letting her arms hang loosely at her sides. “Fine. I’ll let you go so long as you let me speak. Afterwards, if you still want to hand over the watch, I won’t stop you. But I’m gonna speak first, no interruptions. Is that fair?”   
  
John swallowed heavily and nodded.   
  
“Let me tell you what will happen if you give them the watch. They will absorb his essence, giving them his lives and his power. This body alone has centuries left in it. With this and all his remaining lives, they could live for a very long time. During this time they will breed and multiply, spreading across the galaxy. Their offspring may share their power or they may not but it won’t matter since they will have the energy to reproduce almost endlessly. They will conquer entire solar systems. Countless innocents will die. Lovers will be separated. Children will suffer. All the other Elliots of the world will feel what he is now. Entire telepathic species will cry out in collective agony, unable to separate their own pain from the rest. By the time the Family themselves die they will have left behind a terrible legacy of blood and carnage and an army of offspring to continue it.”  
  
There was another explosion, not quite as close as the big one before, but enough that Elliot whimpered and clutched at his head. Martha knelt beside him and put her arms around him.   
  
“Unless…of course…” she murmured, “I became the Bad Wolf fully once more. I could save the universe from them. But then I would die and the TARDIS would be left behind damaged beyond repair without the Doctor to heal her. You would have doomed the last Time Lord, the last TARDIS, and me. You would have committed genocide not once, but twice over. Three times if you count me because I’m unique in the universe. And what’s more, there will be countless lives lost in the past and future, worlds destroyed, and untold suffering that could’ve been prevented if the Doctor had carried on traveling. Plus, and it may not seem like much compared to all that, but Martha will be stranded here in a time and place where she does not exist, separated from all she loves.”   
  
John’s shoulders were shaking and he’d started to cry openly. She could see she almost had him. “That’s the choice you have to make here, John. Which is more important? Your life…or billions of others?”  
  
He sobbed loudly, squeezing his eyes shut, and Violet went him and enveloped him in a hug. He clung to her desperately, burying his face in her neck to muffle his sobs. She looked over his shoulder at Martha. “Will you three give us a minute, please?”   
  
Martha glanced at Rose for a second before nodding. “Of course.”   
  
“We’ll be outside,” Rose added, grabbing her backpack from the floor and plucked the blanket from the arm of the couch. “Elliot, come on. Why don’t we show Martha some of those drawings of yours?”   
  
Elliot nodded and followed Martha out. Rose stared at John and Violet for a long moment then left the room without a word.  
  
Violet waited until she heard the door shut before she squeezed him as tightly as she could. He allowed her to guide him back over to the couch and they sank onto it. He continued to cry for a few minutes and she did as well. It was unfair. Completely and utterly unfair but there was no way around it. She did not regret their time together, she never would, but it had to end.  
  
“If I could do this for you, I would,” she whispered.   
  
“I don’t want you to,” he replied, looking her in the eyes. “You didn’t deserve to get caught up in this.”  
  
“What does that mean? Does that include meeting you? Because I don’t regret it, not one bit. It was doomed from the start but I wouldn’t give up a single moment I spent with you. You’ve made me so, _so_ happy, John Smith.”  
  
“He won’t love you.”   
  
“I don’t expect him to. You told me about him and Rose…and I saw a bit of that tonight. No, he won’t love me. …And if he’s not you then I don’t want him to.”  
  
He cupped her cheek with his free hand and she leaned into his touch, knowing it would be one of the last times she would do so. “You know I never had much luck with dating,” she murmured. “You were the first person I ever really…”   
  
“And that was real,” he promised. “I may not be, but everything I felt was, and everything you felt.”  
  
“I know. I’ll always remember it, too. I may fall in love again but a part of me will always love you. No matter what becomes of you, John, remember that. For me?”  
  
“I will.”  
  
Violet smiled, blinking away tears. “Thank you.”  
  
Another explosion caused a shudder to ripple though the building. She stared into his sad brown eyes for a long minute and then she exhaled shakily. “The longer we sit here the more people will get hurt. We can’t let that happen. We’re doctors, after all. It’s our job to make people better. Go on, John, you do what needs to be done and I’ll go back to the hospital and help everyone they put in front of me. Together we’ll save the world. John and Violet, just two humans, no one special.”  
  
John laughed despite the situation and he leaned forward to kiss her one last time. “Go into the other room, please. I don’t know what’s going to happen and I don’t…I don’t want you to….”  
  
“Sending me away, John?” she asked. He didn’t answer although she hadn’t really expected him to. She stood from the couch and headed for the bathroom, the only other room in this place she felt comfortable entering.  
  
“Goodbye, Violet Lewis,” she heard him murmur. She didn’t look back. 


	46. Red Twilight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Red sky at night, sailor's delight.  
> Red sky at morning, sailor take warning."  
> \- old maritime proverb

The three of them sat huddled together underneath a blanket near the bottom of the stairs leading to the second floor. Explosions filled the air around them and reminded Rose of her time in the London Blitz. Every so often the building rattled ominously and bits of dust fell from the ceiling, the two fluorescent lights in the hallway flickering. The building was eerily silent, most of the residents having already evacuated to the lower levels.  
  
Elliot sat firmly between Rose and Martha where they could keep him warm in the frigid March air and shield him if anything happened. Every so often he would gasp or whimper but he otherwise remained silent as Martha flipped through his sketchbook. She was impressed, maybe even more than Rose had been, and complimented him every other page. He tried to make a response with the psychic paper but his thoughts were so jumped that it was difficult for him to focus enough to make a legible answer so he stopped trying.  
  
“What’s taking so long?” Rose fussed.  
  
Martha sighed. “It’s only been a few minutes.”  
  
Elliot gasped quietly and looked at the door to their flat. Rose frowned and wondered what was going on in there. He glanced up at Rose and she wondered if he’d realized where her thoughts were headed. He shook his head once then rested his head on her shoulder. She put her arms around him soothingly.  
  
“Elliot, would it help if I told you a story?” she asked. “Something from our travels that you can focus on? Maybe pick up images from? There should be a pen in my bag if you want to draw.”  
  
Before the kid could respond, the door to the flat swung open. Rose straightened and she felt Martha stiffen. A man stepped out of the flat but whether it was John or the Doctor she couldn’t tell. He looked around, spotting them on the stairs, and smiled in relief. He shut the door behind him and walked over to their huddle.  
  
“Doctor?” Rose whispered, searching.  
  
“Hello,” he replied. She recognized the way the word rolled off his tongue and the tender look in his eyes as he tried to convince her once again of his identity. It was him. She smiled and tears formed in her eyes. She quickly blinked them away.  
  
“I’m going to find them and put an end to this. Go inside the flat and wait for me to get back. Violet’s still in there and she’s gonna want to head to the hospital but don’t let her out of the flat until the bombing stops.”  
  
Rose frowned at the mention of the other woman but nodded.  
  
The Doctor shifted his gaze to Martha. He pulled the olfactory deceiver from his wrist and handed it to her.  
  
“No! They’ll smell you!”  
  
“It’s alright,” he assured her. “I’ve got a little trick up my sleeve. It won’t last long but it’ll do.” Martha frowned at him skeptically but accepted the deceiver and returned it to her wrist. “If you want to head to the hospital to help, by all means, go. They’ll need an extra pair of hands after all this.”  
  
Martha nodded. “Welcome back.”  
  
He smiled then looked at the last member of the shivering trio who was watching him like a hawk. “Hello there, Elliot Hunter,” he greeted as cheerfully as he could, drawing his name out and pronouncing it ‘Hun-tah.’ “I’m the Doctor. What do you say we muffle all that noise in your head, eh?”  
  
Elliot’s eyes widened hopefully and he nodded. The Doctor raised his hands. “All I’m gonna do is put a few shields up around your mind and dampen your telepathic field. Might feel a wee bit strange, like you’re missing a limb, but I have to make them that strong or they might fall down before this is over.”  
  
He nodded once again. The Doctor pressed his fingers to his temples and the boy jumped in surprise. “Easy, it’s alright. Just relax. Don’t go poking around my mind; it’s a bit of a mess in here right now.”  
  
Elliot slowly relaxed, his eyes falling shut, and he sighed. The two of them stayed frozen like that for about half a minute before their eyes opened simultaneously.  
  
“There you are.” The Doctor pulled his hands back. “Feel better?”  
  
He nodded.  
  
“Good. I’ll remove them for you later and help you rebuild your natural ones.”  
  
The Doctor straightened up and Rose pushed the blanket from her shoulders and stood as well. “What are you going to do?” she asked.  
  
He gazed at her for a long moment, eyes soft, and he placed his hands on either side of her face, leaning in to kiss her forehead. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and clung to him like she’d wanted to for months, sighing. He pressed his face into her hair and she heard him inhale slowly.  
  
Pulling back, he tilted her chin up so he could see her face. “I’m going to make sure they can never hurt us again and then I’m going to make sure UNIT gets called in. They have a branch here in States and they can help clean up and contain. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He brushed his thumb across the top of her cheek. “You can stop now,” he murmured, touching just beneath her eye. “It’s alright.”  
  
“I’m not sure how to stop it,” she admitted. “It normally would’ve by now.”  
  
“You work on that and stay safe,” he said and kissed her forehead again. “I’ll be back.”  
  
He released her then and with one final look at Martha and Elliot, he spun around and jogged down the stairs. They listened to the sound of his footsteps receding before turning as one to face the flat door. Another set of explosions hit, one of them close enough that the whole building shuddered, but Elliot did not react beyond flinching from his own fear.  
  
Martha helped him stand, keeping one hand on the blanket around her. Rose picked the backpack up and headed inside the flat. She set it down in the hall then went looking for their newest charge. She probably was the last person Violet wanted to see right now but she felt like she owed it to her to be civil. She checked both of the bedrooms and finally found her sitting in the bathtub, her head resting on wall.  
  
Rose flipped the switch and Violet’s eyes flicked over to her. The two women regarded each other in silence for a long minute as more tremors shook the building. Rose held out her hand but Violet simply looked at her. Feeling awkward, she lowered her hand and shuffled her feet nervously.  
  
“He said to keep you safe until it’s over,” she blurted out.  
  
“So he’s–”  
  
She nodded.  
  
“Ah. Well, then. I suppose that’s the end.” Violet murmured. “…Keep me safe?”  
  
“You’re…you shouldn’t leave until the bombing stops.”  
  
She smiled up at her wryly. “Is that what you are? A guard dog?”  
  
“Guard wolf, I think.”  
  
A humorless laugh, “Of course.”  
  
Rose licked her lips and her eyes flicked to the mirror. Still golden. That wasn’t surprising, she could still hear the TARDIS’s song. “I’m gonna make some tea.”  
  
“Very British.”  
  
“Would you rather coffee? That’s the _American_ drink, ain’t it?”  
  
“I’ll take the tea.”  
  
“Can Elliot have tea?”  
  
“Why are you asking me?”  
  
“You’re a doctor. You know more about his condition than I do.”  
  
Violet pushed herself up and stepped out of the tub. Rose looked her up and down once and swallowed. They looked a lot alike. She hadn’t noticed before. They could’ve been related.  
  
“Just don’t put too much sugar in it,” Violet said.  
  
Rose nodded and tried to smile, failed. “If–If I had stayed near him then he would never have… y’know. And you probably wouldn’t have bothered.”  
  
“Yeah? Well, I’m glad you didn’t. I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.”  
  
“I’m sorry–”  
  
She shook her head. “Don’t. Just…don’t.”  
  
Rose swallowed and left the room.  
  
Violet remained in the bathroom for a few more minutes, sitting on the counter next to the sink. Bombs continued to drop around the city and occasionally one hit nearby and the building shuddered. After one such swell, she noticed the toothbrush holder had fallen between the sink and toilet and shattered. Acting on the sudden urge, she knelt slid off the counter and knelt down, carefully picking up the pieces and trying not to cut her hands.  
  
Her sister would see this as a metaphor, somehow.  
  
 _Liz_. She hadn’t thought of her sister all evening, not even when the bombs had begin to go off. She’d been so focused on what was going on with John that she hadn’t even spared a thought towards Liz. Where was she tonight? Was she hurt? Was she looking for Violet?  
  
Shaking her head, Violet dropped the last pieces of glass she could find into the trash and set the two toothbrushes on the counter. She pushed herself up and turned around.  
  
Elliot stood in the hallway outside the door, staring. Always staring. The little boy who said nothing and saw everything. _Psychic_ , they’d called him. Violet hadn’t believed in such things for a long, long time and yet here one was, standing right in front of her. Who’d have thought such a sickly boy would hold such strength?  
  
“You see what’s inside my head?” she asked quietly.  
  
He shrugged and looked down at the piece of paper he’d been holding all evening. Rose and Martha had seemed to be reading from it once or twice but every time she looked it was blank. Yet when he held it out to her now she saw that it was covered in words.  
  
 _I can’t control what I see_  
  
The words disappeared and new ones replaced them.  
  
 _I just see_  
  
Violet stared as the words faded and decided that she didn’t want to know how or why the paper was doing that.  
  
 _I’m sorry_  
  
She laughed once bitterly. Was this how a widow felt at her husband’s funeral? Forced to accept the many condolences of those who cared as if they would be enough? “Is everyone going to apologize to me now? You have nothing to be sorry for, Elliot.”  
  
 _Yes I do  
  
Dr. Smith said I played matchmaker  
  
You’re a nice lady  
  
I wanted you to be happy_  
  
Violet smiled and knelt in front of him. “You are the sweetest boy I think I’ve ever met.” She reached out and adjusted the oversized sweatshirt on his shoulders, smoothing out the wrinkles. “Elliot… why did you come with Rose?”  
  
 _She needed someone who could hear the watch_  
  
“Weren’t you scared?”  
  
Elliot licked his lips and nodded. _Yes  
  
I’m scared of the Doctor but I still wanted to meet him  
  
And he needed my help  
  
I’d rather do something good and get hurt  
  
Then just wait around to die  
  
Like you all want me to_  
  
He stepped out of her grip, stuffing the paper into his pocket, and walked back down the hall to the kitchen. After a moment, she turned off the bathroom light followed him towards the only other lit room in the house.  
  
When she arrived, Elliot was sitting in a chair looking apprehensively at the steaming beverage that had just been placed before him, Rose was at the counter stirring the contents of a mug with a tea spoon, and Martha was sitting calmly in the other chair with her mug in one hand and the other resting on the table. A second later the building shuddered from another explosion and her hand shot up, catching the wooden clock that had just fallen against the wall before it could hit her on the head. She lowered her mug to the table then twisted in her chair to replace the clock.  
  
Violet was impressed and it must’ve shown on her face because Rose laughed quietly. “The TARDIS doesn’t always fly smooth. We get knocked around worse than this on a daily basis.”  
  
Well, that explained Martha’s reflexes.  
  
She glanced at the sopping mass of now pale yellow fabric in the sink. “I guess that dress has seen it’s last day.”  
  
Martha grimaced. “Sorry. You can keep the clothes you’re wearing now. Just, um, rip off the labels and burn them or something. Those clothes won’t be made for another four years.”  
  
Violet stared for a moment then shook her head. Time travel was insane.  
  
Rose held out the mug she’d been stirring and Violet accepted it hesitantly. Her tea experiences had consisted of iced tea and the occasional pack of Lipton and she was expecting something like either of those. She couldn’t have been more wrong. The liquid was warm and the taste of warm apples exploded across her tongue. And something else. Cinnamon? No, it was too minty to be cinnamon but not enough to be mint, either.  
  
“What is this?”  
  
Martha responded in a language that sounded like English but with an extra series of clicks and hums. Violet blinked rapidly and looked at the other occupants of the room. Rose didn’t seem bothered by the strange words. Elliot, who had just decided the tea was safe to try, froze with the mug halfway to his mouth then eyed the drink like it might attack him.  
  
“So it’s…tea?” she asked slowly.  
  
“From Barcelona,” Rose confirmed. “The planet, not the city.”  
  
Violet nearly dropped the mug in alarm. “It’s alien?!”  
  
“Well, yeah. The tea around here is rubbish. We had to bring some out from the TARDIS.” Martha took another drink. “You’re not gonna grow a third arm or anything. It’s completely safe.”  
  
Elliot shrugged his shoulders and took a swig. He swished it around his mouth, brow furrowed in indecision, then swallowed and smacked his lips. He licked his lips, nodded, and took another drink.  
  
Violet looked at the deep red liquid in her cup then set it aside. She’d had enough extraterrestrial stuff for tonight, thank you very much.  
  
“Wait,” Rose murmured. “Do you hear that?”  
  
Everyone froze, listening. The only sound in the room was the ticking from the clock and their slow breathing. Then Violet realized why it was so quiet. “They’ve stopped.”  
  
Another beat of silence, then…  
  
“He did it!” Martha laughed loudly. “You know what this means, Rose? We’re leaving!”  
  
Rose raised her eyebrows, a grin tugging at her lips. Violet noticed that the glow in her eyes had dimmed considerably in the last few seconds. “If I didn’t know any better, Martha, I’d say you were feelin’ a bit stir crazy.”  
  
“I didn’t sign up to hang around in 2003 America, that’s for sure! I mean, no offense,” she added to Elliot and Violet. “You lot are great, but if I wanted workdays and livin’ in a flat then I’d have stayed home.”  
  
“Amen,” Rose grumbled. She looked out the window over the sink. “The city’s been devastated, though, hasn’t it? …Y’know, it’s funny. We ran here to hide so no one else would pay for my mistake but look how it’s turned out.”  
  
“I don’t see how that’s funny.” Violet countered flatly. She was, after all, one of those who had been hurt this night. She wasn’t sure how she was still up on her feet and functioning, why she hadn’t broken down crying yet. Maybe it just hadn’t hit her yet? Maybe it was years of practice holding onto her head in a crisis? Her heart was aching and her stomach churned with anger but she felt strangely detached from it.  
  
Rose turned her head. In proper lighting, without the unearthly glow shining from her eyes, she looked entirely human and eerily like Violet herself. They were roughly the same in height and stature, both blondes although hers didn’t seem natural; they had similar eyes, and big lips. Except where Rose was hardened from her life, Violet was soft; where Violet was mature from a longer life, Rose was still youthful. They could’ve been related. Not sisters, but maybe cousins.  
  
“No, it’s not funny. It’s horrible,” Rose agreed. “I was the one who suggested we run to begin with and people died because of it. So I told him to go ahead with his other plan–this.” She gestured to the room as if it represented their entire stay here. “I thought I would be the only one hurt.”  
  
Rose was so much like her. Not just physically, either. She had every reason to dislike Violet but except for when provoked, she hadn’t lashed out at her or John. Now that the Doctor was…here…and she was calmer, she was kind. Sweet, even. She’d offered her tea–wasn’t that some kind of sign of courtesy on the other side of the pond? Staring at the blonde woman across the kitchen, she struggled to figure out why it was bugging her so much. Why any similarities to Rose Tyler–the Bad Wolf, the woman who captured the Doctor’s heart–could be a bad thing  
  
It came to her out of nowhere, the very first conversation she’d had with John Smith nearly three months prior.  
  
 _“What’s your name?”  
  
“Violet. Dr. Violet Lewis.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“Sorry, it’s just…you remind me of someone.”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“I–I… just …someone…” _  
  
He hadn’t seemed to know the answer to his own question. At the time she’d thought it was out of grief or embarrassment. Could it have really been that he honestly _hadn’t_ known? Had he not known because he couldn’t remember her? But then that would mean–  
  
Oh, no. God, no. No. No, no, no, no, no.  
  
Now finally the tears were stinging her eyes. She covered her mouth with her hand and tried not to sob. She wouldn’t cry in front of them. It was entirely their fault and not their fault at all. Rose was asking if she was alright and Martha stood up worriedly. She inhaled through her nose and blinked away the tears, straightening.  
  
“Well, the bombs have stopped. It’s over. I’m going to the hospital. There were a lot of doctors and nurses at that reception; I’m not sure how many actually made it away. Elliot, you’re coming back with me.”  
  
Elliot shook his head immediately.  
  
“I wasn’t asking, I was telling you. You’re coming back with me. I may not be your pediatrician but you are still in the care of the hospital and for a good reason. Your parents are going to be frantic if they make it to the hospital and you’re not there. Martha, you should consider coming, too. They’ll need all the help they can get.”  
  
“If I can,” she answered.  
  
Elliot waved that paper of his in her face. _I can’t leave without the Doctor_  
  
“Elliot Hunter,” Violet warned.  
  
 _He has to take off what he did to me_  
  
“What he did? What did he do to you?” she demanded. “What did he do to him?”  
  
“’s jus mental shields,” Rose spoke up from by the sink. “Protectin’ his mind from telepathy. I’ve got ‘em; Martha’s got ‘em.”  
  
“Sounds like your safer with them on, then.” She told Elliot. “Is that thing yours? If not, set it down and get your sketchbook. We’re going.”  
  
His mouth opened and if he could talk she knew he would’ve protested quite vehemently but another glare from her had him setting the paper on the table. Martha pulled his sketchbook from the backpack and handed to him and he, in turn, started to return the clothes they’d given him, but she stopped him.  
  
Martha escorted them out.  
  
Rose watched them go then picked up her cup and sipped at her tea, feeling guiltier than ever. She felt the TARDIS beginning to wake up and the ship sent her a wave of warm affection as her systems kicked back up. Not long after, the TARDIS hummed reassuringly before abruptly growing distant. It felt like part of her was being pulled and twisted and though it wasn’t exactly painful, Rose cried out in shock at the sensation. Their connection didn’t snap but it had been…stretched.  
  
 _He’s time traveled,_ she realized. That had to be it. More than once she’d remained behind while he’d relocated the TARDIS, before _and_ after the business with the huon, but she’d never remained behind when time travel was involved.  
  
She froze as that sank in. The Doctor had…left. He’d be back, of course, or else the TARDIS would’ve fussed. He was probably dealing with the Family away from Earth where they couldn’t hurt anyone.  
  
 _This is what it feels like to be_ away _from the TARDIS._ It was disturbing. She felt like a part of her had been pulled beyond her reach. Was she going to be like this for the rest of her life, unable to be in a different time than the TARDIS without feeling incomplete? She’d never be able leave the Doctor. Not that she ever planned to, mind, but if this was how it would always be then she _couldn’t_. She’d never be able to live like this.  
  
Rose gripped the table and took a deep, shuddering breath, and tried to compose herself. This was something she’d have to sort out later.  
  
Martha came back not long after and removed Violet’s dress from the sink. It absolutely _reeked_ of bleach and her nose wrinkled as the smell smacked her in the face.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Trying to throw the Family off our trail. Nothing kills scent like bleach.”  
  
Rose nodded and looked down at the remainder of the tea. She sighed and dumped it into the sink, setting the mug down. She was exhausted and more than a little nauseous. She couldn’t believe it wasn’t even eleven o’clock yet. She scrubbed her hands over her face and groaned quietly.  
  
“You look like shit,” Martha informed her plainly.  
  
“I feel like shit.” She lowered her hands and glanced at Martha. “You don’t look much better.”  
  
“Yeah, well. What I night, eh?”  
  
Rose closed her eyes. “What a night.”  
  
She gathered up the mugs from the table and set them in the sink then poured the remaining water out of the kettle and set it in the sink as well. She turned on the tap and squirted some soap onto the sponge. “Are you going to help?” she asked as she washed out the first mug.  
  
“I don’t know. I should, but… we’re leaving, aren’t we? Don’t you think it’d just be better if everyone thought I was dead?”  
  
“Maybe. I’d probably do that except, well, I need to find Aiden.”  
  
“Aiden? That bloke you work with?”  
  
Rose nodded. “Natalie’s like a mum to him and well, she’s one of them, isn’t she?”  
  
“Yeah. She was the Mother and Marc was the Father. The other two were just…” she trailed off and swallowed. “They were just children. I’d never seen them before. The little girl she–she had on a backpack. I think she must’ve been headin’ from school when she was… She couldn’t have been older than eleven. And the boy maybe fourteen at best.” Martha closed her eyes and inhaled slowly through her nose.  
  
“They might still be alive, right?” Rose suggested hopefully.  
  
Martha shook her head. “I asked. They’re gone.”  
  
The Family wasn’t stupid. They had to have known people would be less hesitant to kill the bodies if the original owners were dead. They had absolutely nothing to gain from lying. If they had, though, and Natalie, Marc, and the others were still alive somewhere in there, the Doctor would know and he’d save them. There was that. Regardless, this latest revelation was enough to drain the remainder of the strength from Rose’s limbs. She dropped the sponge into the sink, wiped the soap off on her hands on her jeans, picked the psychic paper up from the table, and slumped out of the kitchen.  
  
She headed for her room and stopped in the doorway, staring at the twin sized bed that she’d slept in for the last ten weeks. Not much longer. It wasn’t bad since they’d had the luxury of almost unlimited money for furnishing their flat, but it wasn’t like her bed on the TARDIS that she missed dearly. It also had only ever been hers. The Doctor had never shared it with her and that had been the cause for many restless nights in the beginning. She’d adapted to sleeping without him but she still longed for his comforting presence as she drifted into sleep at night and into wakefulness come morning.  
  
Rose stayed in her room for the rest of the night. She heard Martha moving around the flat, finishing the dishes, and she turned on the telly at one point. The local newscasters were giving minute-by-minute updates about the situation, informing residents of help hotlines that had been opened, the address for the local blood bank and a list of the hospitals taking blood donations. She switched to CNN several times and the story reached them sometime around midnight. They were speculating that it was a terrorist attack. The National Guard was being called in, along with UNIT.  
  
Drained in every sense of the word, her buzzing mind wasn’t enough to keep her in wakefulness for much longer after that. Gradually, her heart rate and breathing slowed, and the noises from the telly stopped making sense…  
  
 _Rose found herself trapped in a large cylinder of glass with everyone she loved and cared about standing in a circle around it, hands and feet bound. They stared at her, silently pleading her to save them. Then Natalie appeared, followed by Marc, a shaggy haired boy and a little girl with a purple backpack. Natalie and Marc moved around the circle of people and, one by one, killed them.  
  
The children watched, laughing with glee while Rose screamed and banged on the glass.  
  
The Doctor in his first body while it was in it’s prime–a handsome young man with dark hair–was last to go. They killed him…and his next self immediately replaced him. They killed him and again he was replaced. Again and again, over and over, body after body. She watched the many faces of the man she loved staring at her sadly in the seconds before they were replaced. Then they came to her first doctor, big ears, short hair, and piercing blue eyes. She cried out, begging them to stop, to take her instead because she couldn’t watch him die again–no.  
  
Finally, her current Doctor was left. His eyes stared at her hungrily but instead of dying, he was transformed before her eyes into John Smith.  
  
And then they let him go free. _  
  
Rose sat bolt upright in her bed with a gasp. Her eyes flicked around the room before slamming shut. The flat was silent; Martha must’ve gone to bed long ago. With tears dripping out of her eyes, Rose crawled underneath her duvet, pressed her face into her pillow, and sobbed until her chest hurt. When her tears dried up and her body was too tired to shake, she shivered and tried to take deep breaths. Failed.  
  
She still felt like part of her was beyond her reach. The TARDIS hadn’t retuned yet.  
  
She hovered in the gray area between awake and sleeping for a long time afterwards. She must’ve fallen to sleep at some point because the next thing she knew, the world beyond her eyelids was painfully bright. From outside the flat, she could hear the sounds of loud vehicles and horns honking and a few distant sirens. Day One of recovery for Bridgeton, Kentucky had begun.  
  
She shifted, stretching her legs, and realized for the first time that someone was sitting at her waist. Her eyes flew open. For a moment she thought it was John Smith looking down at her but then she recognized the blue suit and the tender smile on his face and knew he was the Doctor. At the exact same moment she realized she felt normal, the strained feeling from last night had gone.  
  
Rose stared at him and after half a minute of silence his smile slipped into a nervous frown. He swallowed.  
  
“Rose, we have a problem,” he said gravely. Her eyes widened. “My sideburns are gone.”  
  
Rose stared at him for three full seconds before she reached up and smacked his arm. “Git,” she growled. “I thought you were serious.”  
  
The Doctor cringed away from her but he was smiling. “Oh, but I am! My sideburns, Rose! He shaved them off! Gone completely, look.” He turned his head from side to side to prove his point. “It’s rubbish, that’s what it is. But, don’t worry, I checked and the mole is still in place.”  
  
She laughed quietly and he did too and when their laughter was dying off, she lunged upwards. She flung her arms around his shoulders and his yelp of surprise was muffled by her lips. He recovered quickly, cupping her cheek with one hand and sliding the other behind her back. He eased her down onto her pillow, propping himself up on his arm, and kissed her sweetly.  
  
“I missed you, I missed you, I missed you,” she whispered in between kisses and slid her fingers through his hair, and he responded with a quiet rumbling sound in his throat. He tilted her head with one hand, changing the angel so he could deepen the kiss, and it was her turn to groan softly.  
  
It was wonderful. It was everything she’d missed and what she’d been longing for.  
  
It was over far too quickly.  
  
The Doctor jumped in surprise, pulling back, and looked out Rose’s open door. Rose lay there, stunned and breathless, until she gathered herself enough to follow his gaze. Martha’s door was open but she didn’t see her anywhere.  
  
He sat up and sighed, running his hand through his hair. “I know you’re there.”  
  
A moment later, Martha poked her head out of her room and made an apologetic face. “Sorry. I thought I heard you two talking…I didn’t realize you were… Sorry.”  
  
The three of them stared at each other for a moment and then the Doctor smiled, holding out his arms and invitation. A grin blossomed on Martha’s face and she bolted into the room. He stood up to meet her for a hug and swung her back and forth before setting her down. Rose laughed, sitting up. Martha squeezed him tightly.  
  
“Oh, it’s good to have you back! It wasn’t the same without you and I don’t just mean the staying in one place part.”  
  
He chuckled. “Good to be back. I knew you two would manage.” He held the hug for a moment longer then let her go. “Nice flat. I wasn’t sure if you’d find a place here or stay in the TARDIS so I had her leave out the essential rooms.”  
  
“Speakin’ of which–” Rose swung her legs out from under the duvet “–why was there a karaoke bar?”  
  
The Doctor grinned and winked before moving on. “UNIT’s arrived. I need to go meet with them and I’d like you two to come with me. You both created fake personas, right? Martha James? Clever, that.”  
  
Martha frowned. “How did you know?”  
  
He tapped his head. “When the watch was opened the final time, my consciousness emerged to reclaim my body. That triggered the sequence to restore my biology to normal, and in the process, John’s persona and memories were assimilated into my own.”  
  
“So you…remember?” she asked.  
  
“Everything?” Rose whispered.  
  
He looked between them. “Yes and no. If I wanted to I could recall every single memory, yes, but to be honest, I–I haven’t. I only skimmed to find the most important things in the beginning. I…saw you weren’t there, Rose, and I’m not sure if I want to remember everything.”  
  
He sounded hurt and Rose lowered her gaze, ashamed. He _had_ expected her to be there.  
  
“Well,” Martha cut in quickly. “We’ve got all our essentials packed. We should take them to the TARDIS first.”  
  
“I did that last night while you were asleep. Haven’t stopped by John’s flat yet but I’ll need to do that before heading to the hospital. There’re some things I need to take care of.”  
  
“Violet?” Rose guessed flatly.  
  
“Yes, of course, and Elliot as well.”

 

~*~

The Doctor was a legend among UNIT, even in America. It was immediately evident by the reverence in the eyes of the soldiers who escorted them to meet the Brigadier of the American branch of UNIT. At first the soldiers merely glanced at them or frowned in suspicion as they were led through the base that had been set up in the park where the Family’s ship had landed. But then Rose heard someone say the word ‘Doctor’ and it spread like wildfire. By the time they reached the Brigadier they’d been saluted no less than twelve times.  
  
Their escort saluted to the black woman in an officer’s uniform. “Ma’am. The Doctor and his companions.”  
  
The Brigaider looked the Doctor up and down with narrowed eyes. “Thank you. Dismissed.”  
  
“Ma’am.” The solider saluted again and left, glancing back at the Doctor one last time.  
  
She put her hands on her hips and surveyed the three of them carefully. “You know, there’s a lot of strange stories told about the Doctor in UNIT. Things he’s created, enemies he destroyed, jokes he told, that he’s responsible for the recruitment of no less than twelve officers in the last twenty years.” Her voice was rough but not unpleasant. She walked towards the Doctor and looked him right in the eye. “One of the stories was that he could change bodies. I never believed it…but no one else could simply eliminate a group of hostile aliens like you did last night. Been a quiet three years without you, Doctor.”  
  
The Doctor met her stare mildly. “You know it’s been longer than three years for me, of course.”  
  
“How long?”  
  
“You know, to be quite honest, I’m not entirely sure,” he admitted. “Time travel, you know how it is. I’d offer you a jelly baby but I don’t have any on me.”  
  
She arched one eyebrow and appraised him one last time before switching her stare onto Rose and Martha. “New faces, I see.”  
  
“Ah, yes. Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, meet Brigadier General Adrienne Kramer.”  
  
“Hello,” Rose said. Martha only smiled.  
  
Kramer eyed them suspiciously. “Humans?”  
  
“Yes, both of them Londoners. They’ve lived under false identities these last few weeks that need sorting,” he hinted.  
  
“So you’ve been here for some time? You didn’t just swoop in and save the day?”  
  
The Doctor hesitated. “No. Those aliens have been following us for some time. We’ve been trying to shake them. Coming here was our latest attempt at throwing them off. It wasn’t supposed to end like this.”  
  
Kramer folded her arms and she glowered. “At least two million dollars worth of damage has been done to the city, Doctor. Bombs rained down from the sky for precisely thirty-two minutes. An army of shadow figures swarmed through the streets. Two children were using people and police cars as target practice. At least fifty people are missing, there are hundreds of wounded, and at least ninety people have been confirmed dead. You’re going to have to do a _lot_ better than that, Doctor, and you’re going to do it now.”  
  
“Of course,” he agreed. “Rose and Martha, in the meantime, can go with some of your people and get their fake identities removed from the systems, but they aren’t to be detained or interrogated in any way, shape, or form.”  
  
“They will need to debriefed.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Doctor, there are protocols–”  
  
“That I could care less about. You want my assistance with this then you’ll agree to my terms. If not, we’ll be taking our leave. We’ll sort our own affairs and leave you to clean up the mess without vital information. No detaining, no interrogating whatsoever.”  
  
Kramer and the Doctor stared each other down in silence for a long time and Rose wondered who was going to win. The Doctor was extremely stubborn when it came to her but Adrienne Kramer seemed like the type of woman who got what she wanted. Neither was willing to budge. But then the Doctor shifted, readjusting his body ever so slightly so that he suddenly appeared protective rather than determined. She couldn’t see his expression but she knew his eyes had darkened and hardened into the glare of the Oncoming Storm. Kramer held his gaze for a few seconds longer then looked away.  
  
“Very well,” she surrendered. “But I must insist on UNIT escorts for the three of you outside of this base for the remainder of your stay.”  
  
“So long as they do not restrict us or attempt to enter the TARDIS uninvited then that’s fine with me. Martha? Rose? Is that alright?” He asked without looking over his shoulder.  
  
Martha’s mouth twisted but she nodded. “Fine.”  
  
Rose simply nodded.  
  
“Excellent.” Kramer eyed the two young women again. “Doctor, you come with me, and we’ll see about getting Miss Tyler and Miss Jones’s identities dealt with.”

 


	47. Loose Ends

  
After returning Elliot to the hospital and lying to his frantic parents, Violet threw herself into work. There dozens of people wounded from the attacks, panicked mobs, and bombings and not enough space for them. They were grateful for another pediatrician down there and there was no shortage of children who needed attention with everything from third degree burns to gashes and broken bones. All of the hospitals in the city were stretched to capacity and sometime around six am, she heard they’d requested everyone who did not require immediate medical attention to not come to the ER. The Red Cross would be arriving soon to set up clinics and the military had also arrived with medical personnel.  
  
Sometime around three in the afternoon, she was ordered to get some sleep since she couldn’t even hold a cup without shaking. She’d headed for the nearest staff room and collapsed on the couch. When she’d woken up around five am, the inside of her cheek was raw. Probing the tender spot with her tongue, she tasted iron. There were dried tears on her cheeks and her neck was sore. She couldn’t remember her dreams, though.   
  
There were other people in the staff room. A few of them were curled up on the other couch and in the plush chairs; others were nursing cups of coffee at the table and watching the news. There was someone dozing at the end of the couch on the floor so she shook him awake and told him he could have it. He barely grunted in gratitude before he was out cold again in the warm spot she’d left. She poured herself a cup of coffee and grabbed two of the bagels someone had left out then took one of the vacant chairs at a table.   
  
There were no commercial breaks, just nonstop information about the attacks. Interviews, replaying footage, and relaying new information; they were constantly updating the list of the missing and the dead, too, although it was difficult to tell who really was missing and hadn’t simply been vaporized. Once an hour for five minutes, they would broadcast the list of names of people presumed dead, with the new additions marked by an astric. 5am on the second day after the shooting added two names to the list: Ruby Night and John Smith.   
  
There was no indication that he’d been a doctor and could very well have been one of the other men in town name John Smith, but she knew without a doubt that string of pixelated letters was meant for him. In the staff room on the third floor, in front of a dozen of her colleagues, Violet wept. No one asked which name had made her cry but the man next to her held out his arms in solace and she sagged into them, grateful for the contact of another human being.  
  
When she’d calmed, she went to the bathroom to wash her face then went right back down to the ER to work. The air was thick with pain and grief and she latched onto it, focusing on the sorrows of others so there was no room left for her own. Face after face, person after person, she examined their wounds and did her best to help them. She fetched water for the doctors and nurses she saw ready to collapse and hardly stopped to get any for herself.   
  
When a med student named Kate broke down sobbing in the hallway in front of her, Violet gently helped her into the nearest staff room and sat with her until she calmed. Apparently she’d been working nearly thirty hours with scarcely more than half an hour of break and no one had been able to relieve her. Violet helped Kate locate her supervisor and agreed to take on the two patients she’d been working with. Neither patient was bothered by the sudden switch. If anything they were happier to know someone who’d slept in the last day, even if she was a pediatrician, was handling them.   
  
Sometime around noon, Violet was on her way to get food from the cafeteria. When she was passing the outpatient registration desk, a man wearing all black caught up with her. She automatically tensed, remembering the solid black humanoids that’d been with the Family of Blood, but a quick look up and down was enough to see he was wearing military gear and not one of the identical skinsuits those things had worn. Plus he had a red beret on his head that was a crime against fashion and a manmade gun on his hip. He was young and dark-haired, definitely a soldier.  
  
“Dr. Violet Lewis?” he asked.   
  
“Yes. And you are…?”  
  
“Sergeant Gabriel Klein of the Unified Intelligence Taskforce. I need you to come with me with me.”  
  
She folded her arms warily. “Is that an order or a request?”  
  
“A request, of course,” he replied.   
  
“And why should I?”  
  
The soldier glanced at a pair of nurses passing by. “I’m not permitted to say but you are not under arrest, nor are you being interrogated, I promise.”   
  
Violet sighed but nodded. “Alright.”  
  
“This way, please.”  
  
The Sergeant led her away from the outpatient area (and the cafeteria, she thought moodily) into a less busy area of the hospital. She asked what the Unified Intelligence Taskforce was. UNIT, he called it, and explained they were a military organization created to combat paranormal and extraterrestrial threats to planet Earth. He also mentioned that the only reason she was allowed to know that was because of her direct involvement with the events two nights before.   
  
“How did you–”   
  
“Know?” he guessed and glanced over his shoulder at her. He didn’t answer.   
  
“Who wants to see me?”  
  
Sergeant Klein stopped in front of a glass door that lead out to a small relaxation garden. She looked around in surprise and realized they were near the Chapel. He gestured to the door. “Go on out.”  
  
“Are you coming?”  
  
“No. I’ll be waiting here.”  
  
She looked between him and the door suspiciously for a moment then pulled open the door and stepped outside. The door shut behind her and she looked back to see him planted firmly in place with his back to the door and his hands at his sides. Taking a deep breath, she headed further into the garden. It was only about three hundred square feet, with three gardens of flowers that weren’t ready to bloom, bushes, a few trees, and a single fountain in the center that wasn’t on. In the late spring and summer it was gorgeous. Right now it was just bleak. It matched the mood of the rest of the hospital.   
  
She could smell fast food.  
  
At first glance Violet didn’t see anyone in the garden and then she noticed a gray hood poking over the edge of the fountain. Curiously, she got close enough to see over the side and saw a lithe figure sitting in the empty base of the fountain with two McDonalds bags and two chocolate milkshakes.   
  
“Um…” she began.  
  
“Sit down,” Rose’s voice requested and she patted the space on the other side of the bags. “I brought food.”   
  
Violet wanted to turn tail and run right then and there but then the smell of the food caught her attention and caused her mouth to water and her stomach to growl. With a sigh, she swung her legs over the side of the fountain and sat down next to Rose. Rose handed her one of the bags–a double cheeseburger and a medium fry–then pulled a burger out of her own bag.   
  
“Sorry, I didn’t know what you’d want. Thought I’d better go with the cheeseburger to be safe. There’s more in my bag if you’re still hungry.”  
  
Truth be told, Violet didn’t much care for McDonalds but she hadn’t had a real meal in about forty-eight and at this point she’d take anything edible. They sat together in silence for a few minutes while they ate their cheeseburgers and Violet did her best to not wolf it down. She probably failed but she didn’t care. Anyway, Rose seemed to be just as hungry.  
  
“Do you hate me?” Rose asked when she’d finished her cheeseburger and Violet was well into her second.   
  
Violet froze mid-chew and her eyes slid towards Rose involuntarily. She resumed chewing, slower than before, and swallowed. She picked up her milkshake and took a drink, setting it down. “I should.” She exhaled slowly though her nose. “But I don’t. It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault but those aliens.”  
  
Rose nodded slowly but didn’t comment.   
  
Violet finished off her cheeseburger and picked the bits of cheese from the wrapper. “What’s with the soldier?”   
  
“He’s my escort. The Brigadier insisted we have them for the remainder of our stay in exchange for agreein’ to not interrogate or detain me or Martha.”   
  
“…Are they…do they want me?” she asked quietly.  
  
“No. The Doctor made her swear up and down to leave you and Elliot alone. They might try to recruit you otherwise, he said. Didn’t figure you’d want the military life.”  
  
“Where is he?”  
  
Rose shrugged. “Dunno. He wasn’t in the TARDIS when I woke up and I’ve been here for a while. The woman the Family took was a friend of mine. She and I worked together and with this other guy, Aiden. He needed to know the truth. I just finished talkin’ to him not too long ago.”   
  
“How’d he take it?”  
  
“Pretty well, all things considering,” she sighed and silence fell between them again.  
  
Violet cast her eyes around the garden again, thinking of something to say. She picked up her fries and shoved a few into her mouth, chewing slowly. She finally settled on, “Why here?”  
  
“I’ve been living here under the name Rose Taylor. Yesterday, UNIT erased all records of her existence. Easier for me to disappear if no one sees me. Martha and I scoped out this whole place when we first got here and this was the most secluded outside location I knew.” Rose smiled ruefully. “I can’t really bear the thought of bein’ inside right now.”  
  
“I’ve been inside for over twenty four hours so I understand.”  
  
Rose nodded. “Are you alright?”  
  
“Seriously? Are you really asking me that?”  
  
“Yes.”   
  
“No, I’m not.” Violet looked away and cradled the container in her hands. “I don’t even know why I’m sitting here talking to you.”  
  
“The food?”  
  
“Oh, yes, that’s it.” She agreed and then swallowed. “Dammit, Rose, why are you even here?”  
  
Rose was silent for a while. Violet finally turned to look at her face, obscured by the shadow of her hood. Her eyes were closed. Once more she was struck by their similarities.  
  
“I look like you.” Violet blurted out.  
  
Rose opened one eye. “You’re older than me. Shouldn’t it be I look like you?”  
  
She ignored her. “John was the Doctor. He was supposed to love you. He should’ve only loved you. So why me? Why did he love me?”  
  
No answer.   
  
“I look like you. The very first time I met him he told me I looked familiar but he didn’t seem to know how. I’ll bet we’re a lot like each other in other ways, too. I was a replacement, wasn’t I?”  
  
Rose sighed ruefully. “Martha seems to think so.”  
  
“Great. So is that all I’m good for?”  
  
“No,” Rose growled firmly. “You’re no replacement. You’re yourself. I hardly know you but I know you’re a great woman. There’s all sorts of things you can do that I can’t. I never even got my A-levels–you finished med school. How many people have you saved in the last day? A lot more than I could have. Don’t focus on the ways we’re similar, Violet, or you’ll drive yourself mad. Yeah, maybe John was drawn to you because you reminded him of me, but he fell in love with you–didn’t want a thing to do with me afterwards. And one day you’ll meet someone who’s attracted to you because you’re you and then loves you for the same reason and not ‘cos you just so happened to look like me.”  
  
Violet held her gaze for a moment longer then looked away. “Maybe.”   
  
“You will. Just because this didn’t work out doesn’t meant that’s the end. I had a horrible relationship, then a dead end one, and then I fell in love with a nine hundred year old alien. Hell, my Mum found love again with a man from another universe.”  
  
“Another universe?” Violet asked, startled.   
  
Rose waved her had dismissively. “Point is: there’s someone out there for everyone. Just gotta find ‘im.”   
  
_I thought I already had,_ she thought and sighed. “I’ve got to get back.”   
  
Rose looked her up and down once then licked her lips. “Listen to me very, very carefully, because this might just save your life. There’s something coming, something far worse than what happened here in Bridgeton, and it’ll be across the whole planet. You’ll need to be ready because the aftermath will be…” she swallowed and a shudder rippled through her. “Don’t trust the ghosts.”  
  
Violet frowned in confusion and opened her mouth to ask her what she meant and when it would happen but she stopped. Was this Rose’s way of trying to make it up to her? Time travel had all sorts of rules and things that Violet didn’t know about and she might’ve broken a few just by warning her. She licked her lips, nodding. She would remember and if she had found another by then she would protect him from these ghosts the way she couldn’t protect John.   
  
Rose must’ve seen her resolve because she nodded her head once. She gathered up her trash and stood up. Violet followed suit and swung her legs back over the fountain. They looked at each other for another moment then Rose smiled and walked away for the last time.   
  
Violet waited until she and the UNIT sergeant were gone before she exited the garden.   
  
_~*~_  
  
To say Elliot was in trouble for going missing that night was a little bit of an understatement. His parents were beyond furious. He didn’t really care. What could they do? Ground him? He lived in the hospital and he was slowly dying of leukemia. He felt bad for causing them to panic but he’d done a good thing, going with Rose. He’d saved the world.   
  
Imagine that. Him. A hero.   
  
He couldn’t tell anyone, though. Who’d believe him, anyway? Dr. Lewis would but he wasn’t too sure she’d think he was a hero. He was the reason Dr. Smith was gone. She might hate him. He couldn’t tell for sure, though, without his mojo. It was strange being without it. Like he was missing another pair of eyes or ears. It wasn’t as bad when it’d just been him, Martha, and Rose, but once he was brought back into the chaos of the hospital he realized that a constant buzz he’d never noticed before was gone.  
  
Was this what it was like for normal people? He wasn’t sure he liked it. Actually, he was pretty sure he hated it. A constant buzz was better than emptiness and annoying insights were better than being left in the dark. Despite sharing their handicap, he felt more separate from everyone than ever.   
  
His father had left about half an hour before to check on a few of their friends that had been injured that night. His mother had headed to get food from the food court but even without his mojo, he was pretty sure she was going to raise hell with someone over his escapade again. She was furious that he’d managed to walk outside without anyone noticing but was overly grateful to Dr. Lewis for returning him. All the other kids were in the playroom or at appointments.  
  
So Elliot was left sitting alone on his bed, staring down at the sketchpad, waiting. Waiting for something to happen. It couldn’t just be…over. Not like this. The Doctor hadn’t even removed the mojo blockers yet. But he was beginning to wonder if there was a point to having it back. He was tired. So very, very tired. The treatments weren’t working like they were supposed to; he’d overheard his doctor talking to his parents a few days ago.   
  
He wasn’t too upset about it. He hadn’t believed there was any real hope for him for a while and that the most they could do was extend his life a little longer. Besides, he’d saved the world. That was more than most people could ever say, even if they lived to be a hundred.   
  
“Blimey, you’ve got a powerful mind.”  
  
Elliot jumped in surprise and the familiar, yet strange voice. His voice and accent were the same. He just used them differently. Dr. Smith had sounded professional, like most doctors did, but the Doctor sounded very casual.   
  
The Doctor sauntered into the room, wearing a dark blue suit and red converse, with his hands stuffed in his pockets and looking very at ease. “I mean it,” he went on. “I’ve got you telepathically shielded but I’m _still_ getting hints of what’s going on inside your noggin.”   
  
He stopped in front of Elliot’s bed. “Can I sit?”  
  
Elliot nodded.   
  
He sat down on the bed, mindful of the sketchpad and pencils. Smiling gently, he reached over and put his hand on Elliot’s shoulder. “Elliot. Elliot, Elliot, Elliot Hunter. Good name. …You were very brave,” he told him seriously. “There’s not many that would do what you did. We all owe your our lives. Rose called you a hero and I agree with her. No one else may ever know but as long as I’m alive, there will always be one person in the universe who knows you’re a hero.   
  
“So, way I understand it, you and John Smith had a little unfinished business. I believe you were asked to illustrate a certain journal of his.”  
  
His eyes widened and the Doctor pulled a leather bound journal from his pocket–wait, how’d that even fit in there?   
  
The Doctor seemed to know what he was thinking because he laughed. “Bigger on the inside. Last night while Rose and Martha were sleeping, I cleaned out John’s flat. I found this. He hadn’t written anything yet so I went through the notebook and copied everything down in the right order. All that it needs now are the drawings.”   
  
He held it out to Elliot. Gawking, Elliot looked between the Time Lord and the journal and then slowly reached out to accept it.   
  
“You can’t publish it, of course,” the Doctor told him. “At least not for another decade or so. By then all the events should’ve happened and people will just assume it’s science fiction. I trust you, Elliot, to know who should and should not see this in the meantime. The things in this journal that haven’t happened yet cannot be altered or it could destroy the universe. Do you understand me?”  
  
Elliot nodded.   
  
“Those sketches of yours, however, if you want to publish those then you can. Well, most of them. I think you’ll be able to judge which ones should and shouldn’t be seen by others.”   
  
He nodded again.   
  
The Doctor smiled and pulled something else from his pocket. The watch! “I don’t plan to use the Chameleon Arch ever again so I want you to keep it. It’s just a watch now, anyway, but it won’t ever wear out or lie to you.”  
  
Elliot cradled the watch in his hands, running his fingers across the markings on the top. It didn’t feel quite like it used to. It felt empty. He flipped it open. There was no golden light, no waves of power, and no voices or pictures in his head–nothing but the two tiny hands slowly making their way around the face and a faint ticking sound. He snapped it shut and set it on top of the journal.  
  
“Now, about your mind. Would you like me to explain exactly why you hear and see things you shouldn’t?”  
  
 _Please!_ He thought excitedly and beamed.   
  
“You’re psychic. Most humans have some psychic potential. Some can’t do anything with it, others can be taught to use it, and others naturally can use it. You’re in that last group. It’s not a very common gift, literally a one in a million thing. There are nearly six billion people alive so in all the world there’re probably only several thousand people born psychically aware. Say there’re six thousand psychics in the world right now. About forty-five hundred of them are low-level. Brief stints of power that come and go. Fourteen hundred of those are mid-level. Their powers are always active so many of them don’t realize they’re different until they find out others can’t do things they do. Then those last hundred are high-level, very powerful, very aware of their gifts, and unfortunately without help and training, some of them go mad.   
  
“You’re mid-level, I’d say.” He squinted. “Clairvoyant, telepathic, and I think precognitive as well. Not a bad skill set.” He nodded to himself. Elliot stared, completely stumped from all the big words. “Er, um. Right, sorry. I keep forgetting you’re only ten. Clairvoyance is…oh how do I explain this? You know things about people without them telling you. You pick up on things that other people don’t.”  
  
Elliot nodded. That was his mojo, alright.   
  
“Telepathy is the ability to share your thoughts and emotions with others. You’re not able to project that well but you have a very powerful receptive field. …Sorry, you can’t share your thoughts with others but you can pick up on thoughts being shared with you. If I were to completely remove your shields, you would be able to hear me speaking in your mind. Make sense?”  
  
He nodded.  
  
“And precognition is the ability to know things before they happen. It happened two nights ago. Has it happened any other time?”  
  
Elliot made a face, wishing he had that mind reading paper. He reached for his notebook and a pencil to explain and the Doctor, seeing what he was doing, pulled the mind reading paper from his pocket. Elliot accepted it eagerly.   
  
_Hello!_ He thought and the words appeared on screen.  
  
 _It happened a few times when you were in the watch  
  
But I can’t think of any other time before that  
  
I’ve had gut feelings and guesses that turned out right   
  
But I never knew or saw things like that before_  
  
The Doctor chewed the inside of his lip thoughtfully. “I can glimpse the future, possible timelines and things. You must’ve picked things up from me. So you have powerful clairvoyance, limited telepathic projection with powerful receptiveness. I imagine you’d like to have them back now?”   
  
_YES PLEASE_  
  
He laughed.  
  
 _I don’t like this at all  
  
It’s so weird  
  
I feel blind _  
  
The Doctor chuckled again and ordered him to put down the paper. “I’m going to remove these shields slowly to let you readjust so you’re not overwhelmed. Then I’ll teach you how to make your own and control them. Remember, you will have access to my mind, but try to keep out. It’s a dangerous, scary place.”  
  
It took ten minutes alone for them to the Doctor to completely remove the shields from his mind and help him adjust to having his mind completely open. Without the dampener on his telepathic field, he was picking up things from the entire hospital and beyond. There was so much pain, anger, and sadness and he felt like he was drowning in it. By the time his mind was completely open he was crying.   
  
“I know. It’s horrible.” The Doctor frowned sympathetically. _Most humans have telepathic potential,_ he continued on mentally. It was very loud but it drowned out the rest of the noise. _They have no control or knowledge of it, though. Everything you’re picking up on is being broadcasted unintentionally. You’ll always pick up on it, but having barriers in your mind allows you to control what makes it through.  
  
Please make it stop, _ Elliot pleaded.   
  
It took another ten minutes for him to teach Elliot how to recreate the barriers he’d created naturally for himself years ago. “Probably when you were an infant, totally on instinct, and added to over the years as you matured,” he explained. The Doctor made him build them all the way up to where he’d had them, blocking out everything, and then taught him how to lower them so he could find a place he felt comfortable. While Elliot was working on that, the Doctor browsed through the sketchpad.  
  
“These really are good,” the Doctor mused. Elliot peeked one eye open and saw the Doctor smile. “It’s amazing the way you learned to channel what you see in your mind. I recognize almost everything.”  
  
Elliot held up the psychic paper. _Almost everything?_  
  
The Doctor glanced at it. “Yes. A few of these haven’t happened yet. I’d remember if they had. …Would you mind if I keep a couple?”  
  
Elliot shook his head and closed his eyes again. He was trying to get that hum of information in his mind back to where it’d always been. Loud enough for him to be aware of it but quiet enough that he could ignore it. He wished he had someone he could practice on. The Doctor was keeping himself heavily guarded.   
  
Finally, he decided it was good enough where it was, and he opened his eyes, nodding.   
  
The Doctor was tucking a few carefully bent pages into his pocket. He noticed Elliot looking and pulled them back off to show him which ones he was taking. The one of his planet, two of Rose, one of the Bad Wolf, two of Susan, and one of a beach at night with sparkling sand and shimmering water. Elliot nodded that it was okay and the Doctor put them in his pocket.   
  
_Are you leaving now?_ He thought to the mind reading paper.  
  
“Soon, very soon. Busy life, you know.”  
  
 _Can I come?_  
  
The Doctor hesitated and for a moment Elliot’s heart soured, then he shook his head. “No. I’m sorry but you’re too young, Elliot. Our life isn’t safe for us, never mind a child. Especially a terminally ill one. Plus you’ve got your family and your friends and a life to live. It’s all waiting for you. School, university, too, if you want–maybe an art degree?–a job. Although, if I were you, I’d warn your parents to start saving up. There’s a bit of a recession coming and you might have difficulty paying for school.” He smiled and the look on Elliot’s face and said gently, “There’s no reason to be sad, Elliot, or to give up. You’re not going to die just yet. Remember I said I could see possible futures?”  
  
Elliot nodded.   
  
“I’ve been looking at yours. You’re standing at a crossroad in your timeline. You have two possible options and each has many potential futures branching out from it, but one timeline significantly longer than the other. You have to decide which one you want.”   
  
The Doctor held out his fist, uncurling his fingers to reveal a single, tiny green pill.   
  
Elliot didn’t even have to ask to know what it was. He stared at it for a long time, noting each and every little detail of the pill, before he gulped and looked up at the Doctor.  
  
His face was as unreadable as his mind. “You could never tell anyone. Not your family, your friends, you’re doctors–not anyone, for the rest of your life. You might receive lots of attention for it but you’ll have to go along with whatever explanation they come up with. They’ll try and figure out how it was possible for years and no matter what you’ll have to feign ignorance. And you’re the only one who gets this, Elliot. I can’t help everyone here; they’ll have to make do on their own. Can you live with that?   
  
“You don’t have to accept this, of course. That’s totally up to you. You’ve still got a few years left. The choice is up to you and only you. It’s your life.”  
  
Elliot looked down at the pill and licked his lips. A miracle cure. That was what the Doctor was offering. A miracle cure for him and only him. Wasn’t this like cheating? It was definitely unfair to everyone else who had to fight through on their own. But how many of them would kill for the chance he now has? And his parents, how excited would they be when they found out he was healthy forever? His mother would cry happy tears. His Dad, too.   
  
His old friends would be happy. Macy would be thrilled and he could finally go to her house and play on the swings. He could go to school and do all the normal boy things he wanted to do. He’d have a life. His father always said the Lord worked in mysterious ways and you couldn’t get more mysterious than a time travelling alien.  
  
So Elliot took the pill from him, took a drink from the cup of water on his bedside table, and swallowed it whole. He tracked its progress down his throat until the sensation disappeared. Other than a slight tingling in his chest he felt no different. No worries. He had time for it to work. He had all the time in the world now.   
  
Elliot smiled and threw his arms around the Doctor who grunted in mild surprise before hugging him back.  
  
“Thank you,” Elliot said. His voice was a little rough and quiet from disuse but he knew the Doctor had understood him.   
  
He laughed once, patting Elliot’s back. “You’re welcome, Elliot. You’re so very, very welcome.”   
  
So focused on everything in front of him, Elliot hadn’t been aware of their audience. The Doctor had and even though she was too far away for her human ears to hear their conversation, he knew she’d seen everything. After saying goodbye, the Doctor left Elliot’s ward and walked down to the hallway where she’d been watching. Rounding the corner, he saw her leaning against the wall, lips pressed nervously together.   
  
Violet glanced up at him and then looked away. He sighed, stuffing his hands in his pockets, and leaned on the wall next to her.  
  
“You look the same.”   
  
He arched one eyebrow. Well, he hadn’t been expecting that to be the first thing out of her mouth. “Yes. Same body, after all.”  
  
“I don’t know what I was expecting. I just figured it’d be obvious you weren’t you anymore.”  
  
“This _is_ me,” he reminded her softly.   
  
She turned her head to glare at him, not appreciating being corrected. “I figured it’d be obvious you were an alien.”   
  
The Doctor shrugged. “Maybe not on the outside. Walk with me a bit? Not too many people should see me since John Smith’s supposed to be dead.”  
  
She nodded and followed him down to a patient’s balcony on the second floor. Glancing around to make sure the coast was clear, he pulled out the sonic and locked the door. Couldn’t have anyone bursting in–or, rather, out–on them. When he turned around, Violet was leaning against the balcony edge, staring at the busy street below.  
  
He sighed. He’d been dreading this and part of him still wanted to turn tail and run. But she deserved more than that. She hadn’t asked for this to happen to her. It wasn’t her fault Rose had–no. He wasn’t going there right now. He crossed the balcony in three long strides and leaned against the edge with her.  
  
Violet rubbed her lips together. “So you dealt with them?”  
  
“I did. How are you holding up?”  
  
“Seriously? Is everyone going to ask me that? How do you _think_ I am?” she snapped then closed her eyes. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“No, no, it’s fine. You have every right to snap. Wait hang on. Who else has been asking?”  
  
“Rose was here about an hour ago.”  
  
“Rose?” Now that was news to him. She’d said she was going to visit some friend she’d made named Aiden–he’d known the woman the Family took. She hadn’t said anything about Violet. Why would she want to talk to her? “My Rose?”  
  
Her mouth twisted. “Yes, your Rose. She brought me lunch and we talked for a little bit.” She licked her lips again. A nervous habit of hers, he recalled. “Rose…she’s been very apologetic. She blames herself for everything.”  
  
He frowned. Now that wasn’t good at all. This whole thing had just ended in a mess. He wondered again if he hadn’t been harsh enough on the Family. But he wasn’t here to talk about Rose. “It was the Family of Blood who caused all this.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“And I’m sorry. If I’d known what he was doing, I’d have stopped it.”  
  
“You all keep saying you’d have stopped him if you could’ve. Did any of you stop to consider that I wouldn’t want you to? I enjoyed the time I had with him and I’m glad for it.” Violet looked at him mournfully. “Where is he?”   
  
“In here, somewhere.” He tapped his head and shrugged.   
  
“Could you…could you change back?” she asked quietly.  
  
“Yes,” he admitted.   
  
“But you won’t, will you?”  
  
“No.”  
  
She nodded. “I thought so.”  
  
The Doctor sighed heavily and looked down at the street. So many people coming and going from the hospital. The busses weren’t running yet and most people weren’t allowed to travel in vehicles. UNIT wanted the useable streets clear for emergency and official use.   
  
He’d been thinking about this for a while and decided he had to offer. It was only fair. “You could come with us.”   
  
Violet’s head snapped up sharply. “Beg pardon?”  
  
“You could travel with us, if you wanted.”  
  
She stared at him for a solid thirty seconds before she laughed, shaking her head. “And there it is.” He blinked once, frowning in confusion. What was she on about? “I know women are from Venus and men are from Mars, but you’re definitely from a different planet altogether.”  
  
“What?! First off, I assure you, both the males and females of your species originate from the same planet. But, you know, some species actually do come from different planets–like the Pirri! The male Pirri live on one moon and females live on its twin, which does lead to certain issues whenever communication and transport between the two is halted, but they deal, I suppose. And second, of course I am from a different planet! I thought that was obvious?”  
  
Violet sighed heavily. “You know what I mean. And that wasn’t the point. You’ve spent so much time among humans, protecting us, learning from us. Are you really that ignorant of how our hearts work? What would Rose think when she found out I was coming with you? Really, pretend you’re human for five seconds, and think about it. What if the roles reversed and she brought the man back with her? How would you feel?” She paused to give him a moment to do just that. He didn’t tell her that he knew how it felt. He remembered how he felt when he realized she’d invited Adam along. “Would you really do that to her?” she asked but didn’t give him a chance to answer. “And what about me? What do you expect me to do? Just–just get over being in love with someone who shared your face and be happy for you two? It doesn’t work that way.”  
  
Violet swallowed and seemed to consider her next words carefully before speaking. “John told me that you’re always sending her away to protect her but she keeps coming back, except for the last time. I get it now. When you decided to become him, you sent her away. She didn’t come back because she didn’t want John.”  
  
The Doctor remembered her saying that as John. That had come as quite a shock. He’d figured she would stay near him, that she would care for the man he’d become. She was able to love him in his new body, after all.  
  
“And I don’t want the Doctor,” Violet finished. “I understand how she was able to make the distinction. You have the same face, same voice, but you’re a completely different man. You’re not him and I don’t want to be around you because all you’ll do is remind me of him. There’s no way for this to end happily for all of us and if I go with you then it will only hurt us more. I’m a doctor, not an adventurer, and I’m _tired_.”   
  
He nodded, understanding where she was coming from, and more than a little relieved at her refusal. “Okay, then. Will you be alright?”  
  
“To be honest, I’ll be better once you’re gone. You’re not helping. But time heals all wounds, Time Lord.” Her mouth twisted sardonically and he wondered if she believed her own words.  
  
 _No, it doesn’t._ He thought bitterly. _That’s just a proverb created to give hope the pained and desperate. Some wounds never heal. Some get worse with time. Without time there wouldn’t even be wounds at all._ But he doesn’t say that to her. She needed hope, or at least the hope of hope. Instead, he nodded one final time, and headed for the door. He’d just got it unlocked when she called his name.  
  
He turned around, raising his eyebrows.   
  
She rubbed her thumbs together uncertainly for a moment before her hands dropped to her sides. “What was that pill you gave to Elliot?”  
  
A grin slowly stretched across his face. He could tell her, but where was the fun in that? She’d figure it out soon enough. At least Elliot would have one person who would always know the truth.   
  
He left without answering and Violet, to her surprise, did not cry.   
  
Two days later, she saw Elliot walking down the hall with his parents. They had the biggest smiles on their faces and Elliot seemed a bit smug. He saw her, smiled, and led his parents over to her. His mother thanked her again for returning him to the hospital but she had her eye on Elliot. He hadn’t come over here for his parents. She waited, expecting him to communicate somehow when he was ready, as was his way. She wasn’t expecting him to open his mouth and _speak_. “I’m in remission.”   
  
It was difficult to say who was more surprised.  
  
Two weeks later, his leukemia was gone. Completely and utterly gone. The only signs it was ever there were in the frailty of his body but even that seemed to be improving. Every single doctor in the hospital, including those who had nothing to do with pediatrics or cancer, was aware of it. Even those who weren’t religious were calling it a miracle.   
  
And it was. A miracle from a great man in the form of a little green pill.  
  
An array tests followed–the doctors refused to believe his abrupt recovery was by the grace of God–and Elliot bore them with little complaint. He never mentioned the green pill and neither did Violet though they would frequently exchange glances that reminded each other of their shared knowledge. After nearly a month, they gave up. They could find nothing that explained his miraculous healing.   
  
During the week of testing he was moved to a private room instead of going home. They didn’t want him getting sick. He didn’t seem to mind. He spent a lot of his time sketching in his sketchpad and drawing in a mysterious brown journal that he never let anyone else see. Violet asked about it one day and he carefully told her about the journal and what was in it. He told her he would let her read it if she wanted.   
  
After three days passed with no sigh of the Doctor, Rose, and Martha, she figured they’d finally left. In many ways, she was relieved. But their departure meant her John was well and truly gone. Having John labeled as dead, as it turned out, was a gift in itself. Everyone on the floor knew about it and she didn’t have to hide her grief. Her parents hadn’t even known she’d been seeing anyone so they, too, were informed her boyfriend had been killed. Liz, though–Liz she told the truth. All of it.  
  
Liz thought she was insane but, then, that night had also been insane. Then her sister had scowled, crossing her arms over her chest. “Shoulda known a fella like that was too good to be true.”  
  
“He was true, though,” Violet argued. “He just…wasn’t for me.”  
  
Her tears slowly dried and she stopped looking for a mop of brown hair in the halls. She ate the last of the tuna casserole in her fridge. When she realized the DVDs in the shelf had been shifted, she scrolled through them until she found _The Santa Clause 2_ inserted just beneath its predecessor. She decided she didn’t need to know when or how it got there.   
  
At work, she kept an eye and ear on Elliot at all times. He may have broken through the wall separating him from the rest of the world, but he still didn’t talk much, not even to her. Maybe a few words here and there and a real laugh once, but other than that he was quiet.   
  
Macy’s visit was the most she’d heard him speak. Her hair had grown back in, a bright, shiny blonde, that just reached her ears and she no longer wore a bandana. Her parents brought her by to say hello to Violet who, in turn, followed them to Elliot’s room. Macy said hi, climbed right up on his bed and, unaware of recent developments, started chattering away until he interrupted her with a half-annoyed, half-amused, “You didn’t even give me a chance to say hello back.”  
  
Macy about toppled off the bed. “Did you just talk?!”  
  
He tilted his head to the side and blinked once. He was silent for a long moment and everyone was beginning to wonder if he was actually going to say anything else. Then, “Dunno. Did I?”   
  
“Oh my GOSH! YOU _TALKED_!”  
  
He flinched at the shrillness in her voice. “And you shouted.”  
  
By the time Elliot was discharged from the hospital–for what she knew would be the last time–he had a light layer of blonde fuzz covering his head, almost entirely hidden beneath his bandana. He was still too small for his age but not quite as scrawny and his skin had gained a healthy glow that she blamed on the pill.   
  
She came by to visit him one last time on the day he was to leave and he was waiting with a piece of paper. He held it out to her wordlessly and she took it.  
  
It was her and John, curled up on her couch with a bowl of popcorn. She was nestled against his side and he had his arm around her and they both looked utterly content. He’d gone into such detail and the colors were just as she remembered them. There was no way he could’ve known about this without his psychic abilities and she had never been more grateful for them. Running her fingers briefly across John’s face, she pressed the picture to her lips.   
  
“Thank you,” she whispered as tears welled up in her eyes.   
  
Elliot said nothing in response but she hadn’t expected him to. His leukemia was gone but he still had plenty of recovering left to do, just like she did. Her heart still ached but she was moving on. Maybe one day he would become the cheery, talkative child he once was, maybe one day she would be happy again, but it would take time.   
  
Thankfully, they both had plenty of it. 


	48. Downcast

  
  
The TARDIS landed during the summer, on the edge of large cliffs overlooking the ocean. The sun shone brightly above them but dark clouds rumbled in the distance. The winds were so powerful that anything under a hundred pounds would go flying instantly. As it was, Rose and Martha still felt like they were liable to blow anyway any second.  
  
But they didn’t care.  
  
Rose threw her arms out wide, tilting her head back, and let the air rush through her. Her hair whipped and tangled behind her, her clothes flapped, and the warmth of the sun wasn’t quite enough to negate the chill on her skin. She hadn’t felt this alive in nearly three months. She didn’t care where she was or when; all that mattered was where she _wasn’t._  
  
They were free. Finally.  
  
The Doctor hung back near the TARDIS, not enjoying the wind as much as his companions. They’d requested some place sunny and open. Somewhere _not Earth_. He understood the urge to get away, having been exiled to Earth himself once. Their exile had passed in what felt like seconds for him. He had memories from John Smith that proved three months had passed and proof that his subconscious had been having a field day, but to him it had been like falling asleep. Falling asleep slowly and painfully with his head locked in a metal contraption, screaming so loud he hadn’t even heard Rose return to the control room.  
  
Once the wind died down, they both collapsed onto the grass and he decided to join them. Rose saw him coming and chuckled. “There’s an oncoming storm in both directions.”  
  
Martha glanced up and then snorted.  
  
He sat down in between them and stretched his legs out in front of him. Silence fell between them as they watched the approaching storm.  
  
Rose glanced at the Doctor again. Their eyes met and she looked away quickly, unable to hold his gaze for longer than a few seconds. She was terrified of what she might see there. He had to be furious with her, or at the very least disappointed. It was all her fault, after all. He’d expected her to stay by him and she hadn’t, not like she knew she should’ve. It had been an incredibly selfish move on her part but she had gotten her wish and hadn’t had to choose between them.   
  
Instead she’d ruined two people’s lives.   
  
She hadn’t even considered John would fall in love with someone else. Though, in hindsight that had been an incredibly stupid assumption. She’d tried so hard to separate them in her mind yet she’d gone and just _assumed_ he would share the Doctor’s feelings for her even though he’d never met her. But, then, he’d had them after all, hadn’t he? Somewhere, deep inside, and they were probably what drew him to Violet to begin with. He’d loved her; he could’ve spent a whole human life with her. Part of Rose wished she could’ve let them have that.   
  
But the universe needed him.  
  
She needed him.  
  
Rose saw the look of detestation on John’s face and Violet’s pleading expression in her mind again. She rubbed her eyes quickly in an attempt to dispel the image.  
  
What would happen when the Doctor looked through all of those memories he’d gotten from John? Had he already? Was that disappointment she’d seen in his eyes all from him or was something from John lingering there as well? Memories were powerful things, after all. She hadn’t ever been through something like that, not by a long shot, but it didn’t seem entirely far-fetched that the Doctor would feel at least a fraction of the emotions John had felt while living those memories.   
  
Was that why he hadn’t shown up in her room last night? Even if he couldn’t stay with her for the entire time, he’d always come to say goodnight and make sure she fell asleep. She’d waited for nearly an hour before dropping into an uneasy slumber and waking up with the resolve to talk to Violet.  
  
“Karjikkx,” the Doctor blurted out suddenly, drawing her back into the present. “Two point five times the size of Earth, inhabited by two races known as Eusts and Plarks.”   
  
God, she’d missed listening to him. The way he could spout out information about places like an encyclopedia. The way he rolled his vowels and drew out syllables. Not for the first time she wondered if his accent always varied with regeneration. She had no way of knowing for the alien languages, but the time she’d actually heard him speak different Earth languages, the accent sounded spot on. Both this and her first Doctor had sounded like born and raised Brits while speaking English. Had he ever sounded American or Irish or German? What had his very first accent sounded like, back when he first began speaking English?   
  
“They get along well enough. It’s the 98th century, roughly, and they’re reaching the point in their history where they’re beginning to recognize the offspring of Eusts and Plarks as an official race instead of just crossbreeds. Call ‘em Eurks.” He puckered his lips with the name, drawing it out more than necessary, like he always did with words he liked. Rose thought it sounded like he was choking.  
  
“Is there a city nearby?” Martha asked mildly.  
  
“Mmm, probably a coastal town or something, but that’ll have it all locked down.” He nodded to the storm. “We can try the other side of the planet, though, if you want.”  
  
“Are they friendly towards outsiders?”  
  
“Oh, yes.”  
  
 _Never heard that one before_ , Rose thought. “Which means we’ll be in jail within the hour.” She said matter-of-factly.  
  
The Doctor frowned at her but she still wasn’t even looking his way. He knew she was upset about something but he couldn’t for the lives of him figure out what it was. He knew the answer more than likely lied within the memories of John Smith but he was more than a little afraid to look. What had his idiot counterpart done or said to make her so wary of him?  
  
“That’s alright,” Martha said. “Been about twelve weeks since we’ve been arrested.”  
  
“And ten since we’ve run for our lives.”  
  
He grimaced, remembering what Rose had been like the first few times they’d had to run like mad and she hadn’t been used to it. “Are you out of shape?”  
  
“Not exactly,” Martha replied. “We went for runs a couple times a week. The last week or so, though, we haven’t.”  
  
Rose wrinkled her nose. Jail didn’t sound appealing. She’d just escaped from one prison and stepping right into another one wasn’t her idea of enjoying freedom. Besides, she didn’t want to be trapped in close confines with the Doctor right now. So she suggested something that wouldn’t likely get them locked up. “How about instead of the city…we go float over a nebula for a while. I’ve been wanting to do that.”   
  
“Ooh. I like that idea.” Martha agreed, already pushing herself up. “And then dinner on Rox–the first Rox, not the second one–at that restaurant with those little flying balls of light–you remember? It had a weird name.”  
  
“ _The Court of Ukrila_ ,” the Doctor supplied.   
  
“Yeah, that’s it.”  
  
  
“And it wasn’t a restaurant. It was a dinner theater,” he corrected. He eyed the storm clouds in the distance. “That storm’s getting closer. There will be another wind gust coming soon, probably more powerful than before. We should go,” he advised as he got off the ground.  
  
Rose nodded. It wasn’t until after she was already on her feet that she realized the Doctor had held his hand out to help her up.  
  
The Doctor, however, didn’t realize she hadn’t seen, and tried not to let show how much her refusal hurt him. Or how much any of the subsequent ones did, either. Oh, she went along with the motions–she held his hand when he offered it, she smiled when he did something silly, she listened patiently when he spoke at length. She glared at him pointedly when he tried to eat dinner with his fingers even though he tried to explain that, no, Rose, this wasn’t him being rude that was how this dish was meant to be eaten.  
  
But her fingers didn’t curl around his just so and she wouldn’t quite meet his eyes even when she smiled. He hated it and he cursed himself and his counterpart.  
  
Martha didn’t appear upset at all. Her laughs and smiles were genuine. She met his eyes. She accidentally called him John once then immediately apologized. “Sorry! I’m still trying to get used to this again. Remember how many times I called him ‘Doctor’?”  
  
He did and he didn’t fault her for it.  
  
He wondered if that was what Rose’s problem was. She was having difficulty separating the two of them. Did she see John when she looked at him? Maybe if the pillock hadn’t _shaved off his sideburns_ (no, he was not over that, and wouldn’t be until they were back) they wouldn’t be having this problem. He’d have to remind her who he was. That was how it had been when he regenerated. At first she’d doubted him, then she’d given up on him. Then she’d seen him prove he really still was the same man. _“No arguments from me!”_  
  
The question was how.  
  
He was still mulling it over when he arrived in her room that night. He wanted things to get back to normal between them and this–curling up with her as she fell asleep, and sometimes sleeping himself–was normal. His human body had been exhausted before it’d transformed back and it’d been nearly forty-eight hours since then. He needed sleep and he never slept away from her these days (from his perspective, anyway). She kept the nightmares at bay and made waking up worth it. Nothing was better than having Rose Tyler be the first thing he was aware of when he awoke.  
  
Opening the door, the Doctor poked his head inside. “Rose?”  
  
She was already lying down but when he spoke she raised her head and blinked at him in surprise. They stared at each other. “Oh,” she said after a moment.  
  
Fear churned in his belly. Was she going to reject him? “If–If you don’t want me here…”  
  
“No!” She sat up abruptly. “I want you here! I do! I just wasn’t… I mean…”  
  
He waited.  
  
“You didn’t come last night,” she finished in a tiny voice.   
  
_Oh._ Damn it. “Yes, I did. One of the UNIT soldiers came knocking on the TARDIS door after we had dinner to tell me they needed my advice on something they found. By the time I got back you were already asleep. I stayed with you for half an hour before I went to sort John’s flat.”  
  
“Oh,” she whispered. He silently berated himself for his idiocy. She must’ve been waiting for him last night and had been upset when he hadn’t shown. Then he hadn’t had the decency to be there when she woke up and disappeared for most of the day to tie up the last of the loose ends. No wonder she’d been acting this way.  
  
He stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him, and walked over to the bed. She scooted over to make room for him and he sat down next to her. She kept her head down, not meeting his eyes until he reached out and tilted her chin up. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.   
  
Rose exhaled slowly, closing her eyes, but he couldn’t tell if she accepted or not.  
  
He swallowed, still fearing rejection. “Can I stay?”  
  
Her answer was to lean forward and nuzzle his shoulder with her face. He sighed and slid his arms around her, holding her. She mumbled something unintelligible into his shoulder and he craned his neck to see her face. “What?”  
  
She turned her head, eyes inches from his. “I said, ‘You helped me sleep while you were in the watch.’” She dropped her gaze and fingered the collar of his shirt. “When I had trouble sleeping, I’d hold it in my hand and listen to your whispering.”  
  
His eyebrows shot towards his hairline. He knew he’d spoken to Elliot but he hadn’t realized he’d spoken to Rose as well. But how had she heard him? The communication had been entirely telepathic. Elliot was a mid-level telepath–which, compared to Gallifreyan standards, wasn’t much at all–but she was not. She had telepathic potential and could communicate with the TARDIS almost as well as he could, but she was not even on par with a low-level telepathic human. “What did I say?”  
  
“My name, mostly.”  
  
“Your name,” he repeated slowly. “Anything else?”  
  
Her fingers stilled. Oh no. What had he said? His mind ran through a list of things, all varying degrees of horrible, and he was about point two seconds away from panicking when she said, “Just a few words here an’ there. My name was clearest.”  
  
She was lying, he knew immediately, but he didn’t press it. If she wanted to tell him the truth then she would do it in her own time. But he worried because whatever it was, she was afraid he wouldn’t like it, or he’d regret it. He couldn’t think of any other reason. But what had his subconscious mind told her that she doubted him enough to conceal it from him now?  
  
Rose shifted, pulling out of his grasp, and lifted the covers for him. He crawled underneath them with her and was about to put his arms around her again when she flipped over, presenting her back to him. He blinked, confused and wary, then inched towards her, placing his hand on her hip. She didn’t squirm or pull away so he scooted closer until his chest was a mere inch from her back. She sighed softly, reaching up to put her hand over his. Relieved, he curled his arm around her and pulled her against his chest, throwing one leg over hers, and held her tightly.  
  
“I’ve missed this,” she whispered. “I could hardly sleep at first. It was hard to get used to being alone again.”  
  
“I’m here now.” The Doctor murmured in her ear and kissed the edge of it. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”  
  
“Promise?”  
  
“I promise.”  
  
She nodded, brushing her thumb across the back of his hand. He pressed his lips to her temple, letting his mind reach out briefly to brush the bright warmth of hers, but not entering. She shivered in his arms but otherwise didn’t react–she probably didn’t even know why she’d shivered to begin with. He felt the familiar flicker of remorse at her lack of telepathic abilities. There was a strong chance they would be able to share a form of telepathic link if they were ever bonded through marriage–and he hoped, oh, he _hoped_. It wouldn’t be as powerful as a bond with another Gallifreyan or even another telepath, not without physical contact, but there would be at least something. Then he could take the place of his ship, singing her mind to sleep himself even if he couldn’t be there with her physically.  
  
It didn’t take long for him to slip into sleep, a dreamless state of bliss he could only get with Rose in his arms or vice versa. She kept the terrors of his subconscious at bay and protected him from the cold loneliness of being the last of his kind and without a home. She was warmth; she was safety. She was home.  
  
When he woke up sometime later, he blinked blearily at the ceiling and tried to discern how much time had passed. Six hours. That was enough for him to last the next week or so, normally, but he was still tired. His mind was too foggy for his awakening to have been natural. That thought ran through his mind several times before he was coherent enough to send a questioning mental prod in the direction of his ship.  
  
He received a worried hum in response. A second later, Rose whimpered, her body jerking in his arms. And just like that, he was completely alert. He raised his head, propping himself up on his elbow, and leaned around to see her face. Her was brow furrowed, lips parted and curled downward, eyes crinkled in sadness.  
  
She let out a panicked whimper, followed by a tiny cry of, “N-no!”  
  
He twisted his free arm to reach her and brushed the hair away from her face. “Rose, it’s okay. Rose, love, wake up.” He whispered, giving her a tiny shake. “It’s me, I’m here. Wake up.”  
  
Rose was having the same nightmare she’d had the last two nights.  
  
 _The Family of Blood had everyone she loved, bound in a circle, and she was trapped, unable to do anything but watch. Whenever she tried to turn away, she saw the rest waiting to die, or the bodies of those who’d been killed already. The Doctor, of course, started in his first body and was regenerated over and over until he reached his current body.  
  
He looked at her sadly, longingly, as he always did, but this time he opened his mouth and spoke. “Rose, it’s okay.”  
  
Then they killed him and John Smith took his place. Instead of killing him, however, they let him go. He surveyed the ring of bodies with despair. Then his eyes found her, kneeling in the center of the circle. She reached out to him pleadingly, begging for help, but his face hardened, his expression one of loathing, and he turned his back on her, walking away into the darkness while the Family cackled with glee–_  
  
Rose’s eyes flew open and she sucked in a sharp gasp of terror. There was a body pressed against her, an arm around her waist, and she jerked reflexively. “Get off me!” she cried.  
  
Her eyes locked with the pair of alarmed brown ones and, with a jolt, she realized John Smith was _in her bed_ and–  
  
 _No_. No, Not John Smith. He was gone, dead. Reabsorbed. He didn’t exist except in memories. This was the Doctor. Her cheeks flushed with shame and she looked away from him. How could she, for even a second, mistake him for John? She’d never mistaken the latter for the former, not once in all those weeks.  
  
“It’s okay. It’s just me.”  
  
“I know,” she replied. “I was just surprised. I’ve been sleepin’ alone, y’know.”  
  
He was silent for a moment. “You had a nightmare.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Do you want to talk about it?”  
  
Rose hesitated. “The Family. They…killed everyone I love while I had to watch. You, died, too. Ten times.”  
  
His arm tightened around her. She didn’t tell him that he’d then turned into John and left her behind. That would only make him feel worse.   
  
“They’re gone. They won’t hurt us or anyone else ever again. I promise you.”  
  
She swallowed and rubbed her lips together before flipping herself over to face him. He lifted his arm to allow her to readjust then he curled it around her once more. “What did you do?” she asked.  
  
He opened his mouth. Closed it.  
  
“You’ve been tellin’ everyone that they’ve been sorted for good. Reckon they all just assume you killed ‘em but not me. I know you. You wouldn’t’ve killed ‘em.”  
  
The Doctor was quiet for a minute. It was difficult to see his face in the dark room but she could tell his expression was grim. “Do you really think so much of me? …They murdered dozens that night alone and injured hundreds more, and in Cardiff, and possibly in other places while they were hunting us, not to mention the many who they killed before they found us. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.” His voice lowered, becoming smooth as silk but as cold as the voice of the Oncoming Storm. “They would’ve murdered you in cold blood if given half the chance. They deserved to die for what they’d done. _They deserved it._ ”  
  
Her face tightened sadly and she cupped his cheek with her hand. He leaned into her touch, eyes closing for a moment. “And if I was merciful, that’s what I would’ve done.”  
  
She resisted the urge to draw back, tightening her fingers around his face instead. “What did you do?” she repeated.  
  
He opened his eyes. “They wanted to live forever. So I gave them immortality.”  
  
She waited.  
  
“I wrapped the Senior Male in unbreakable chains, forged in the heart of a dwarf star, and trapped him in a labyrinth trapped in a time bubble. A minute for him is millennia for the universe. I flung the Senior Female into the event horizon of a collapsing galaxy, imprisoning her there forever. I trapped the Juvenile Female in a time loop–she’ll forever relive the same five minutes over, and over, and over, unable to escape, and no matter what she does it will never end. And the Juvenile Male I sent to a pocket dimension, alone, right next to ours. He might bleed through to this universe from time to time, nothing but an echo of course–just a ghost to those who may happen to glimpse him–for the rest of eternity.”  
  
He hadn’t looked away from her the entire time he’d spoken and continued to hold her gaze even after he’d finished. He looked somewhat ashamed by his actions and frightened, too. By what? Her judgment? She was the one who should be afraid of he’d despise her for what shed’ d done, not the other way around  
  
Rose wasn’t sure what to say. It was definitely cruel. Almost, in a way, crueler than the fate he’d sentenced the Cybermen and Daleks to that day at Canary Wharf. The number of times she’d wished the Family would just die those weeks in Bridgeton. She hated them so much. It was all their fault and they deserved punishment But now faced with their fates, she realized death would’ve indeed been a mercy for them. He turned their deepest desire into a curse. In his darker moments, the Doctor believed himself a monster. She could see a bit of that monster in his eyes as he spoke of what he’d done to the Family of Blood. But with such intimate knowledge of the reasons behind his actions, she couldn’t be disappointed in him.  
  
So in honor of everyone they’d hurt–herself, Martha, Marc, Natalie, the little girl and boy (whom she’d learned had been called Nikki and Zack), Violet, and all of the other the people in Bridgeton–she nodded her head. “Good. You gave them a chance and they blew it. They got exactly what they deserved.” She cupped his face in her hands. “You took care of them and you’ve avenged everyone they hurt an’ killed. Thank you.”  
  
He exhaled in relief, eyes slipping shut, and his mouth crashed into hers. His kiss was hard and desperate and she wondered how long he’d been worrying about this. She tried to reassure him with the gentle slide of her lips against and brushing her fingers through the hair at his neck. His arm tightened around her, pulling her flush against him, and coaxed her lips open.  
  
Oh, how she’d missed him.  
  
For a moment, her mind went back to their last kisses in this room, just before he went through the Chameleon Arch. It’d been she who’d been rough and afraid, knowing what had to happen and preparing herself for it, taking comfort while she still could. Now it was his turn.  
  
The Doctor ran his hand up her back and she felt her shirt ride up while she, in turn, grazed his shoulders with her nails. He moaned. He pulled away, then, and she could hear his shaky breaths. She kept her eyes closed and tried not to be disappointed. This was always where it ended. Now he would pull back from her just slightly more and curl his body around her for sleep.  
  
“Rose,” he whispered. She opened her eyes. His were dark and in the dim light from her ‘window’ she could see that his lips were parted, drawing in ragged breaths, and so much for his respiratory bypass. They stared at each other for a long minute, their breaths mingling. “Can I…?”  
  
She nodded, grabbed the back of his head, and pulled his mouth back down to hers. He made a quiet noise and kissed her back, passion replacing the earlier roughness, and she felt her blood heating up. The Doctor pressed forward, rolling them so she was on her back and he was leaning over her with his legs off to the side.  
  
She wound her fingers through his hair, scraping her nails across his scalp and he made that low sound in his throat that she’d discovered last time when there hadn’t been enough time. They’d needed to sort things out with the Family, mend her wounds, and make sure Martha was okay. But there was nothing stopping him now. No wounds to speak of, no enemies to thwart or pursuers to shake, and their companion was safely tucked in her room for the night. It was just them. Rose and the Doctor. His lips locked with hers and her hands sliding up his chest.  
  
He shifted his weight so he could run one hand down her side and then slip it under her shirt.   
  
Never in a million years would Rose have thought that, if it ever happened, she’d stop something like this. But with the sudden contact of skin on skin her mind cleared, and all the memories, the ones that had been plaguing her for days, came back in a rush Everything she’d been through emotionally because of John, and Violet, too; the hurtful words he’d said, the guilt she’d felt for everything she’d done wrong; the dream and the two times now that she’d woken up and mistaken him for his human counterpart.   
  
She couldn’t do it. She wanted him but not like this. Not while there was still so much unsaid.  
  
Rose turned her head away, breaking the kiss. The Doctor, misinterpreting her sudden movement as the need for air, moved his mouth to her throat and latched onto a spot under her ear. Her breath hitched, a quiet noise escaping her throat, and she nearly forgot why she was trying to stop him. He fingered the hem of her shirt and her mind cleared enough that she was able to gather enough resolve to push lightly against his chest. Gentle enough that she hoped he wouldn’t feel rejected but firm enough to get the point across.  
  
He pulled back slightly and raised his head, his hand stilling on her hip. “Rose, wha–?” he asked breathlessly.  
  
She sucked in a few breaths past her teeth. “I c-can’t. I just–I just can’t.”  
  
His snatched his hand back like he’d been burned and looked away. “R-Right. Sorry. I didn’t–didn’t mean–I–sorry,” he stammered, rolling away from her. Before she could even blink he was off the bed as well.  
  
She sat up, reaching for him. “Doctor, wait, let me explain–”  
  
“Nothing to explain,” he said stiffly, looking anywhere but her. “I’ll just–I’ll just go, then.”  
  
“No! Don’t–”  
  
He was already out the door.  
  
“–go,” she finished quietly. She stared out the door and waited, hoping he would appear. At least maybe he’d return to close the door. But after two minutes of staring at an empty doorway she realized he probably wouldn’t be coming back.  



	49. So much to Say

 

_If only you wouldn't run away..._

_-_

The TARDIS unleashed another wave of displeasure in his mind.  
  
 _Stop it_ , Her Doctor growls through their link.  
  
If She had hands She would slap him. As it was, She was able to express Her irritation quite adequately by relocating the chair he was sitting in to another room and leaving him behind. His bum him the floor first and then his back. He sat up, grumbling, and gave the ceiling a dirty look.  
  
 _That was uncalled for. I haven’t done anything._  
  
The lights in his room were the next things to go. He sat in the darkness, silently, for about five seconds, during which time She felt his anger burning around their link.  
  
“Why are you doing this?” Her Doctor will shout in his native tongue. No translation for this language. “She didn’t want me!”  
  
 _How would you know? You did not even give Your Rose a chance to explain why she halted the mating before you ran!_ She ‘shouts’ at him. Despite their mutual telepathic capabilities, his mind could only process Her form of speech as various colors, images, and feelings that he had to piece together himself. As such, the chances of him perfectly understanding Her meaning were slim.  
  
 _You hurt her._ She thought and showed him Her Wolf crying in her bed from minutes before.  
  
Her Doctor winced at the image and his body shifted to mirror her position, his legs drawn up to his chest.   
  
_And you’ll only hurt yourself more if you don’t go back_   
  
He leaned his head back against the wall and sighed. She felt his anger and fear give way into sadness as he tried to figure out why His Rose had pushed him away, and She decided Her anger would no longer be beneficial. Her Doctor was hurting just as much as Her Wolf. Once more She longed for arms to hug him with or some physical way to offer him comfort.  
  
She brushed his mind, lightening Her hum to a more soothing tone, and returned the lights to a dim setting.  
  
 _What did I do wrong?_ He asks. _Why did she push me away?_  
  
She nuzzled his mind again. She knew, of course, the reasoning behind Her Wolf’s actions, but it was not Her place to tell him. They had to work this out for themselves or they would never learn. But if it went on for too long then perhaps an intervention would be beneficial.   
  
She could see the timelines better than Her Doctor and She knew what was coming even though he did not. Another storm was approaching. Some of it was clouded and warped and She could not see the details, presumably because the variables were too great, but they were rapidly approaching several fixed points that could not be altered. She only hoped they could be happy in the brief time they had left.  
  
She doubted the Dark Girl would be difficult to recruit. The human had banged her head against Her walls many times over the two of them. She had been concerned for the Dark Girl’s health. The human skull was a delicate thing and while She was quite used to having Her corridors walked through and things dropped on Her floors, the sensation of having a human head banged repeatedly against Her walls and struts was not exactly…pleasant. She couldn’t imagine it was too comfortable for the Dark Girl’s delicate head as well.  
  
Her Doctor, though tired, did not sleep again. After a time, he rose from the floor and made his way to his room. He changed from the clothes he wore in sleep to his suit—that blue one again, She noted.  
  
Brown represented happiness and contentment among his people. She had been elated when She’d seen he had decided to wear a lot of brown in this regeneration, knowing Her Wolf was the cause of the joy in him. But this suit was the shade of blue that represented sadness and loss. He’d only worn it on several occasions—first during the weeks when Her Wolf had been mourning the loss of her mother, once or twice while he and His Wolf had been violated by the sentient sun, and over the last few days.  
  
It was a good thing, She decided, that Her Wolf did not know what the colors meant to his people. It would only hurt her more.  
  
Time passed.  
  
The Dark Girl stirred in her room and She began to gradually raise the light in her room, simulating sunrise. The Dark Girl woke slowly and She hummed a greeting before turning the lights on all the way. The Dark Girl patted Her wall fondly before going to dress herself. She checked Her schematics to ensure She had placed the kitchen back where it was usually located, knowing that was where the Dark Girl would go first.  
  
Her Wolf woke last and stayed in bed for a long time afterwards. Through their bond She felt Her Wolf’s melancholy and apprehension. She was afraid to get up and face Her Doctor. She wished She could help her some other way than just nuzzling her telepathically and keeping her blankets warm. Finally, Her Wolf emerged from her bed and went into prepare herself for the day.  
  


~*~

  
  
Rose was very much aware of the TARDIS’s continuing attempts to console her as she got dressed. It was a relief to not have to dress like a receptionist anymore. The TARDIS had already relocated all of those outfits to the wardrobe for storage and Rose’s closet was full once more of her favorite hoodies, shirts, jeans, leggings, and skirts. Trainers, boots, and practical sandals and flats were arranged in neat rows on the floor. She picked a dark blue shirt with elbow-length sleeves, a denim vest, jeans, and her trainers. She curled her hair and left it down just because she could. She applied copious amounts of eye makeup because she didn’t have to look professional anymore.  
  
Rose Taylor was gone and Rose Tyler couldn’t be happier about it.  
  
After breakfast alone, she went to the console room. Martha was there but the Doctor wasn’t.  
  
Martha smiled at her, eyes twinkling. “There you are! I was beginning to wonder if either of you planned on showing your faces today. So are we going somewhere?”  
  
“I expect so.”  
  
“Where is he, then?”  
  
She shrugged. “Dunno. He wasn’t there when I woke up.”  
  
Rose wouldn’t bother her with all the details unless she had to. The Doctor was either going to pretend nothing happened or he wouldn’t and things would be awkward. Then she’d wait until he was out of earshot then tell Martha. Her friend was so thrilled to be on the move again and she wouldn’t spoil her mood with their problems if she didn’t have to. It wasn’t her job to solve them, anyway.  
  
When the Doctor finally arrived–wearing the blue suit again, she noticed–his eyes lingered on her for a moment longer than normal. Specifically on her shirt and she realized idly that it was the same shade as his suit. She hadn’t even thought about that when she chose it, plus she’d expected him to be back to brown now that they were on the go. They stared at each other for a moment longer then he was doing his manic dance around the console to pilot them somewhere great.  
  
He took them to one of Rose’s favorite amusement parks, Sky Island, on the planet New Danmi in the Andromeda galaxy. New Danmi had an unusual magnetic field and many of the minerals in its earth were very metallic. As a result they literally had floating islands. Sky Island was about the size of the Isle of Man and located above a tropical sea.   
  
Many of the rides were made of a synthetic material that resembled glass but were tougher than titanium. Their transparency made it seem as if the coaster cars were flying through the air on their own unless one looked just so and then the elaborate structures were visible. There were thirty two traditional roller coasters, twenty coasters where the cars were actually flying through the air guided by virtual tracks, thirty other rides, and a water park with an array of water rides, pools, and lazy rivers.  
  
Martha was quickly enthralled by it. She had a million questions about the island itself while they were in the queue to get their access bands so they went to History Hill first, a small mountain devoted to the history of the island, planet, and solar system. One of the rides was all about the island and you rode through in a circular four-person car that spun quickly every so often. Sky Island, like many of the other floating islands, had been born from the sea and as it gained mass it slowly rose higher and higher until it was cut off from the ground below and continued to drift upwards. In another thousand years it would reach its pinnacle and then, over the course of millennia, would gradually descend back into the sea.  
  
While Martha listened to the recorded voice explain all this, the Doctor sat quietly between her with his arm on the seat behind Rose, not quite touching her.   
  
After Martha felt suitable educated, they descended from History Hill into Racer Valley. This five kilometer long stretch of park contained the fastest rides. There were two of them that went so fast that the Doctor would not let them ride on the grounds that their 21st century bodies were not strong enough to handle the sheer amount kinetic energy.   
  
“Generations of space travel and alien genetics,” he explained, “made the humans of this time able to handle speeds that would’ve killed their ancestors.”   
  
There were others he wouldn’t let them near, either. These didn’t achieve deadly speeds but they could still have negative effects on their bodies that he would have a difficult time reversing. They ended up not riding very many in this section and the three that they did were the slowest ones of the lot. Afterwards, they moved to the Kiddie Park just for fun. They were too tall for most of the rides, of course, but there were some aimed at teenagers or allowed for accompanying adults that they decided to go on, because why not?  
  
As Rose had predicted, he had decided to pretend things were okay and last night had never happened. He bounded around the amusement park, as energetic as a child, chattering away happily, and reaching for her hand. Sometimes she took it. Other times she ignored it because if he could pretend things were fine then she could pretend she didn’t see his hand waiting for hers. Still, she tried to not let her mood spoil the day. It was one her favorite parks, after all.  
  
Martha rode on one of the virtual-track coasters and was a little too freaked out so they decided to forgo the rest of the Flying Field coasters. There was one attraction, however, Rose refused to pass up. It was an obstacle course that you flew through. Upon entry, each person is given a hover pack that uses a form of sonic energy to keep the wearer afloat, much to the Doctor’s delight. He spent a good three minutes explaining the benefits of sonic technology and the other uses for the frequencies they used in these packs to the attendant and Martha had to drag him away so they could get in the course and the attendant could get back to work.   
  
While they were making their way through the course, Martha waited until the Doctor had flown ahead before circling back to Rose, who was taking her time going through. “What’s going on?” she asked quietly.  
  
Rose sighed.   
  
“He’s acting too… _normal_ , and half the time you are acting the same way, and the rest of the time you seem upset. Something happened, didn’t it?”  
  
“Yeah,” she confirmed. “And he’s gonna pretend it didn’t. That’s how he copes.”  
  
“But you don’t want to do that.”  
  
She shook her head.   
  
Martha sighed heavily. She raised her arms and thrust downward, propelling herself up and over the thick bar running through the middle of the corridor. Rose dove beneath it, straightening on the other side. Martha returned down to her level as they weaved through golden pillars.   
  
“I thought things were a bit tense yesterday. I was hoping you two would work it out on your own.”  
  
“We–he–I don’t…” Rose lowered her head miserably. “If I try to approach him about this, he’ll run. He ran last night before I could even explain why–”  
  
Martha put her hand on her arm comfortingly. “You have to try.”  
  
Rose hummed noncommittally.   
  
After the obstacle course, they headed to get lunch. They spent an hour browsing the various food stalls and restaurants on Dining Cliffs. When they were done, they took a teleport to the other side of the island where the water park was located. They bought swimsuits in one of the shops–both women chose one-pieces for practicality, Martha a dark gold and Rose a light pink. Rose decided to ignore the way the Doctor’s eyes roamed up and down her body when she emerged from the changing stall and did her best to not stare at his exposed skin, either.  
  
Rose headed straight for the lazy river, grabbed an inner tube, and plopped down on it. Martha joined her, holding on to one of the handles of Rose’s so they didn’t drift too far apart. The Doctor declined to join them and instead sat alone on one of the deck chairs set out for the patrons.   
  
So far today had gone well enough. At least she was meeting his eyes and holding his hand every so often. It wasn’t much, but considering she’d rejected him last night and he’d run, it was more than he expected. She could’ve refused to come at all and the fact that she hadn’t gave him hope. Maybe they could move past this. Maybe she wouldn’t leave him again.   
  
He was afraid to see what John Smith’s life had been like without her and he certainly didn’t want to know what his own would be like without her in it. Now that he’d experienced life with her he could never go back to the way he was before.   
  
He should talk to her. He knew he should. But he still had no idea what she’d originally been wary about and things had strenuous enough then. One wrong move now could ruin everything. She’d never once hinted that she regretted not staying with her family in the other universe but he was afraid that he might’ve finally given her one.   
  
When Rose and Martha finally reached the end of the mile long circuit nearly ten minutes later, they saw the Doctor perched in a yellow deck chair, chin propped on his fist, looking melancholy. They glanced at each other then slipped out of their inner tubes and waded over to the steps. Her saw them coming and perked up, a too-bright smile on his face. Then he dragged them over to the nearest wave pool, just in time for the next round to start.   
  
Martha had never been in one before and decided very quickly that she did not enjoy being tossed around in the deep end and retreated to the shallow waters, leaving the two of them alone to battle against the waves. There was an obvious gap between them where he normally would’ve been, keeping an arm around her to help her to stay afloat. Neither of them looked at each other for a solid minute after Martha left.  
  
The Doctor finally glanced over at Rose after a particularly large wave rippled past. “Having fun?” he asked.  
  
“Yeah!” she panted, kicking frantically to keep her smaller body at the surface. And she really was.  
  
Days on New Danmi were 49 hours long so the sun was still high in the sky when he informed them they’d been at the park ten hours and they should probably head back to the TARDIS.  
  
 _Good,_ Rose thought. _You and I need to talk._  
  
But he didn’t give her a chance. Muttering something about engine work, he disappeared into the bowels of the ship within a minute of dematerialization. In an unspoken agreement, Rose and Martha went to the kitchen to make dinner together like they always did on the nights they both got back to the flat around the same time. Rose asked the TARDIS to inform the Doctor that they had food set aside for him but he never made an appearance.   
  
He didn’t show up in her room that night, either. She laid awake for what felt like hours waiting for him until she couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore and slipped into a fitful sleep. She had the dream again. They killed everyone, they killed him, he became John, and John abandoned her. She woke up crying, tangled in her sheets, but he did not come. She pulled his pillow to her chest and tried to go back to sleep.   
  
The next morning she crawled blearily out of bed and decided she did not want another night like that. She sought him out, fully prepared to corner him and physically restrain him if that was what it took to get him to listen. But when she found him in the console room, Martha was there and they’d already landed. She’d requested a shopping spree so he’d taken them to a mega mall on a space station in the 24th century and they spent the day browsing hundreds of shops, fending off energetic stall vendors, trying food, and riding boats along the river that ran through the mall. By the time they made it back to the TARDIS laden with bags, both women were exhausted. The Doctor got the TARDIS to relocate their things to their rooms then disappeared before they could stop him.   
  
Once again the Doctor was a no-show and the night would’ve passed the same as the last if the TARDIS had not intervened, humming gently and soothing Rose’s mind as she slept. She did not have the dream.   
  
Two more days passed in this manner. Rose would get up with every intention of talking to him only to be whisked off to somewhere fun, kept busy all day, and then left alone when their adventures were over. He was running and running hard. She wanted to catch him, wanted to explain. She didn’t want him to be mad at her anymore and he _needed_ to know that she wasn’t mad at him and didn’t blame him for anything. But he wouldn’t even let her. When they were alone, he hardly looked at her. When she even hinted at the subject he changed it quickly or tried to distract her. Finally, on the fourth night after a day at a resort, she couldn’t take it anymore.  
  
The Doctor sent the TARDIS into the vortex and then headed for the door, claiming he had work to finish from last night, and Rose snapped. “Stop it!”  
  
He spun around, eyebrows raised, and she saw a hint of fear in his eyes.   
  
Days of stress and emotional turmoil had taken their toll and she hadn’t been sure what emotion would burn strongest when she finally confronted him. It seemed that anger had won out. “I’m sick of this! Sick of it, y’hear? I’m not stupid, Doctor. I know what you’re doin’ and I’ve had enough! Stop runnin' away from me!””   
  
Martha, recognizing the beginning of a row when she saw one, made a face and scurried out of the room.  
  
Rose waited until the sound of her friend’s footsteps faded before she began again. “You’re a coward,” she spat, “you know that? A right proper coward! Always runnin’ from something, don't matter what, you just run ‘cos you can’t face it.”  
  
“So?” he demanded. “What’s wrong with being a coward? You don’t know everything I’ve done Rose, you have no _idea_ the things I’ve been through. I think I’ve earned the right to run away.”  
  
“Maybe I would understand if you’d bloody tell me! I see you hurtin’ over somethin’ but when I try to talk to you–when I try to help you–you push me away! You clam up; you change the subject! You can’t run forever!”   
  
“I _have to_! This is what matters, here and now.” He jabbed the air in front of him for emphasis. “I can never look back, never go back, and I can’t ever stop. If I did I–I’d probably go mad.”  
  
“I won’t let you,” she promised quietly.  
  
“And when you’re not around to stop me?” the Doctor demanded. “What happens when you’re gone? You are the one thing that’s made my life worth living since the Time War. If I stop running then what’s gonna happen once you’re gone? Am I supposed to just let myself descend into madness? An ordinary madman is bad enough, but a mad Time Lord with no one to stop him?” He swallowed, fear flashing across his face before he clamped down on it. “I can’t do that.”  
  
Rose sighed heavily, hand on her hip. “I’m not an idiot, I know there’s things you don’t wanna face but I shouldn’t be one of ‘em. Our relationship, or whatever you want to call it, shouldn’t be somethin’ you fear as much as the bloody Time War!”  
  
He frowned. “I’m not afraid.”  
  
She slapped the rim of the console. “Don’t give me that! You’re terrified of us. It took you nearly two years to work up the courage to even kiss me. An’ I don’t count the Gamestation ‘cos that was somethin’ else. Now look at you.” She gestured furiously around the room. “Pretendin’ there’s nothin’ wrong when there obviously is. You didn’t even give me a chance to explain why I pushed you away the other night and I’ve been tryin’ to for days now!” She stalked around the console towards him and his eyes followed her intently. “Stop avoiding me and just _talk to me!_ ” She yelled when she was right in front of him.  
  
The Doctor glared at her for a long moment, then turned away, running his hand through his hair in agitation before finally growling, “Fine. If that’s the way you want it, I’ll talk.”  
  
She threw her hands into the air. “Finally!”  
  
He whirled around. “You abandoned me.”   
  
She recoiled sharply, arms dropping to her sides. His words mirrored the ones John had spat at her a week before, the night he saw her for the first time.   
  
Her voice was like ice. “I didn’t! You were the one that sent me away!”  
  
“That’s not what I meant!” he shot back, fists clenched. “I meant afterwards. You didn’t stay with me. You promised you would, Rose. You _promised._ ”   
  
“I kept you–I kept the watch with me the whole time. Losing it at the end was an accident, I didn’t mean to. I kept you safe, just like you asked.”  
  
“And my body?” the Doctor demanded. “That was still me.”   
  
“No it wasn’t.”  
  
“John was me. He was me–this me–without the Time Lord’s consciousness and memories. Everything John was, I’m capable of.”  
  
He’d probably been trying to soothe her, she knew, but terror seized her heart and she had to fight the urge to step back. “Everything?”   
  
“Everything.”  
  
“N-no. No. That’s not–he wasn’t–you aren’t–” Shaking her head in denial, she licked her lips and tried to figure out how to make him understand. Her earlier anger had faded, replaced by fear and desperation. She would not lose him over this.  
  
“Remember when Cassandra was inside me? Remember how you could tell it wasn’t me? Think about it. Things she said and did, you could just _tell_ it wasn’t me. It was my body but I wasn’t in control and once she stopped pretending it was obvious. I knew from the get go when I saw her in you and I _hated_ it. …I HATED IT!” She screamed, tears in her eyes. “I’d only just gotten used to you in this body and then that bitchy trampoline took it! Then now with John, I–I didn’t want to have to watch another man, day after day, walkin’ ‘round in your body.”  
  
She shook her head. “I accepted it when you regenerated because I learned it really was still _you_. I know you Doctor, I know you better than anyone, and I saw ‘im. I saw John Smith, I watched him sometimes just to see your face. I know what I saw and he may’ve had your body but it weren’t you in there!”   
  
Rose stared at him for a moment longer, lips trembling and tears trickling down her cheeks. “And I’m sorry if it hurt you, I am, really. But I never wanted to look at the man I love and see a stranger lookin’ back at me. Once was enough, I couldn't do it again. And I didn’t…I didn’t want…. I didn’t want to love him, too. I didn’t want to even risk it. ‘Cos…if I had, then I’d have had to choose which one of you got to live. How could you expect me to even do something like that? _How?_ …I never left you, Doctor. I never, ever left you, and I never will.”  
  
He opened his mouth and then shut it. He looked torn and heartbroken and clearly had no idea what to say. She swallowed past the lump in her throat, wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. They were both quiet for a minute.  
  
“The other night–” he opened and closed his mouth a few times before sighing. “Why?”   
  
She wiped her eyes again and sniffled. “That first mornin’ I woke up with you there in the room…I thought you were him. I spent so long keepin’ the two of you separate in my mind and then suddenly I was mixin’ you up. I hated myself for it.”  
  
“No, Rose, don’t–” he started to say, reaching his hand out.  
  
“No, stop. Let me finish,” she said, wringing her hands. “…He wasn’t you. But then he had to be. An’ he wasn’t–he didn’t–he didn’t do what…” she sighed in frustration. “He tried to avoid it, tried to get out of it. Tried to give ‘em the watch. You wouldn’t’ve.” She finally met his eyes again. “You’d have gone and given yourself over ‘cos that’s who you are. I know it, even if I wouldn’t want it, you’d do it.”  
  
The Doctor nodded once, just a slight incline of his head.  
  
“He wanted to live badly and I had to convince him to kill himself. Then I had to face Violet. I tried to make it up to her, I tried, but, God, I felt like I was tryin’ to stick a plaster on a bullet wound. An’ you know what? She didn’t hate me, Doctor. It’s my fault this happened to her and she didn’t even hate me. She should’ve. I would’ve. John did.”  
  
“He what?”  
  
Rose shook her head. “I saw the look on his face, I heard it in his voice. He even told me he wanted nothin’ to do with me.” She licked her lips. “You said you’re capable of everything he was. How comes he hated me, Doctor?”  
  
The Doctor had his eyes closed. His entire body was tense, his lips pressed tightly together.  
  
“Now you won’t even look at me?” she demanded.   
  
“Shh.”  
  
“Don’t you tell me to–”  
  
“No, Rose, just…shh, please…. I’m looking,” he explained. “I have all John’s memories but I haven’t gone through all of them. Didn’t want to.”  
  
“Afraid of what you might see?” Rose guessed.  
  
He hesitated and then nodded, eyes still closed.  
  
She licked her lips and something else she’d been wondering about bubbled past her lips. “Did he sleep with her?”  
  
That caused the Doctor’s eyes to fly open. “What?”  
  
“Did John sleep with Violet?” she repeated.  
  
“Does that matter?”  
  
 _YES! Of course it does!_ She wanted to shout. Because even if the mind in the body hadn’t been his, the body still had been. And it was stupid, and maybe a little petty, but she couldn’t stand the thought of that other woman of having something she’d been waiting so long for. He was _hers_.   
  
The Doctor exhaled slowly, eyes slipping shut again. “No. To both.”  
  
She was both relieved and confused. “I know what I saw.”  
  
He shook his head. “He knew who you were before you even confirmed your identity and he was so…happy. But he knew the emotions came from me and he was trying so hard to escape, so he rebelled. In that moment you represented everything he was denying so he lashed out at you. He degraded you. He tried to make you not want him in hopes that you would back off and take Martha with you. That you two would come up with some way to save everyone and he could stay with her.”  
  
“So he–he didn’t hate me?”  
  
“Of course not,” the Doctor said gently and opened his eyes. “He could never hate you, even in his final moments. It just wasn’t possible for him. After all, he came from me.”  
  
“And you don’t hate me?” she asked in a tiny voice.  
  
Brown eyes flipped wide in horror. “No! I’m a little upset with you but of course I don’t hate you! How could you even think I…? I could never hate you, I–” He paused, took a deep breath, and as exhaled, the Doctor murmured, “I love you, Rose Tyler. You know I love you. So, so much, and I always will.”   
  
Rose stared at him for a full second before she realized that he’d finally said the words. She’d known for a while, of course (how could she not?), but she hadn’t anticipated the way her heart would soar and her body would sing upon hearing the words. She felt like running around and whooping with joy and shouting to the universe just so it would know, despite all the times it had tried to split them up, _he loved her_.   
  
What she did instead was grab him by his lapels and pull him down for a heated snog. He responded with fervor, mouth opening under hers, their tongues dancing together. Their hands roamed across each other’s bodies, pulling them closer and closer. Next thing she knew her back was pressed up against the back jumpseat. He reached down and lifted her up by the waist, and without breaking the kiss he shifted them around so she could sit on the edge of the seat. She wrapped her legs around his hips and pulled him closer, pressing her body against his, and he trailed kisses down her throat. She whispered his name and her love as she raked her nails through his hair.   
  
The Doctor drew back, panting, and looked her in the eye. “Rose…are you sure?”  
  
Rose pressed another kiss to his lips. “I’m sure. I’m completely sure.” She jumped down from the seat. “But not here, yeah?”   
  
He smiled, slipped his hand into hers, allowed her to lead him out of the console room. 


	50. Acid

  
_John Smith gazed around the circle of the dead with horror. The Family leered at him, cackling gleefully. “She’s next,” hissed the Senior Female in Natalie’s body.  
  
John glanced at them fearfully and followed their gaze. He saw her kneeling in the middle of the ring of the bodies of the people she loved.   
  
“Please,” she sobbed, reaching out. “Help me.”  
  
His fear morphed into anger, disgust. He scowled at her then turned and walked away. She called after him desperately but he did not even pause. Eventually he was swallowed by the darkness and all the while, the Family howled with laughter.  
  
And she was alone. Not-Natalie raised the same gun she’d killed the Doctor with and–_  
  
Rose jerked awake with a loud, choking gasp. Her heart thumped wildly in her chest and her breaths felt shallow, like her lungs had shrunk to the size of apples. Her eyes stung with tears before they’d even opened. She twisted around, reaching blindly for where the Doctor lay, seeking comfort, but she felt nothing but the mattress and blankets. And then she realized she really was alone. She always could tell if he was in the bed with her, even if he wasn’t curled around her or right next to her. She’d spent three months without him there and she could tell the difference. She was definitely alone.  
  
She drew her hand back to her chest, pulling the duvet over her shoulders, and tried to calm down. It was just a dream, after all. The same one she’d been having all week and it was no more real now than it was then. The Family was trapped forever, and the Doctor was fine. So why did she still feel miserable?  
  
The door opened suddenly, startling her, and she jumped. She squinted against the light from the hallway and saw the Doctor standing there with something in his hands. He took one look at her and gasped, shutting the door quickly. He set what he was carrying on her desk, kicking off his shoes, then rushed over to the bed.  
  
She rolled over, reaching out as he lay down next to her, and he grasped her hand tightly before sliding it up her arm and around her back. He had his shirt back on, she could feel the soft fabric against the bare skin of her back, but no jacket.   
  
“What’s wrong?” he asked anxiously.   
  
She took a deep, shuddering breath, but couldn’t speak.   
  
“The dream?” he guessed.  
  
Rose nodded.   
  
“Okay,” he murmured, kissing her forehead. “Okay. I’m here. I’m alive.”  
  
She remembered then that she hadn’t quite told him the truth. Not the entire truth, at any rate. As far as he knew, in her nightmare the Family killed him and that was the end of it. She hadn’t mentioned his transformation into John.  
  
She looked at his face–the cool skin of his cheeks, the small rough patches where he was re-growing his sideburns, his smooth lips–and was struck once again by how _lucky_ she was. The Doctor had given his last self to save her, and had then used what control he had over the regeneration process to make himself someone she would like. She certainly didn’t deserve it, not then and especially not now. But he’d thought she was worth it.   
  
“There was…more,” she explained quietly. His fingers brushed through her hair. Once, twice, and a third time, over and over, slow and soothing. “You don’t die in my dream–this you, I mean. You become him. And he walks away and leaves me behind to die.”  
  
His fingers stilled. “Oh,” he murmured after a moment.   
  
“He would’ve, too.”   
  
“No,” he argued after a silent moment. His fingers resumed their gentle combing. “He wouldn’t have. He wouldn’t have abandoned any of you.”  
  
Rose was quiet for a short time, letting his reassuring words circulate through her mind. They didn’t have the calming effect he’d intended. Instead they caused a quiet thought that had been hissing at her from the back of her mind to rise up to the forefront and made her face burn with shame. When she voiced it her voice was so quiet she barely heard herself say, “He should’ve.”  
  
The Doctor stilled again. He didn’t agree…but he didn’t disagree, either.  
  
“He should’ve,” she repeated more surely. “’S not like I hadn’t already done the same.”  
  
He remained quiet and still. Maddeningly still. She wasn’t even sure he was breathing.  
  
“Please say something,” she begged.  
  
“Rose–” he tried then stopped. He breathed deep and exhaled. Opened his mouth. Closed it. Finally, “He never thought you’d abandoned him.”  
  
“But you do.”  
  
“Did,” the Doctor corrected. “I understand your reasoning, Rose, even if I don’t particularly like it, even if I may not have done the same if our positions had been reversed. But I understand.” He cupped her cheek with his hand. “It’s over and it’s done with. Don’t let it keep haunting you. I’m here now and I forgive you.”  
  
She closed her eyes and sighed in relief.   
  
“Just…”   
  
She opened her eyes.   
  
His were wide, pleading, more than a little afraid, and his entire face screamed vulnerability. “J-just please…don’t–don’t leave me.”  
  
“Never,” Rose promised fiercely. “I told you I’d never, ever leave you, and I meant it.”   
  
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he whispered over and over, punctuating each with a kiss. He slid his arm around her waist and rolled them over, pressing her into the mattress as his quick, chaste kisses lengthened and deepened into more passionate ones. She sighed softly. And there was no more talk for the rest of the night.   
  


~*~

  
  
Martha did not go looking for either of them for the remainder of the evening. She figured if one of them wanted to talk to her, the TARDIS would guide them to her. She made herself dinner and watched a bit of telly before retiring to her room. Neither of them ever turned up. They were a no-show at breakfast as well but that had been the norm for the last week. She headed to the console room when she was finished, expecting to find the Doctor already prepared with the day’s itinerary, but he wasn’t there. She waited for fifteen minutes, checked her watch to confirm it was around nine am (relatively speaking, of course), before looking at the time rotor in the center of the room.  
  
“Is everything alright?”  
  
The TARDIS’s hum lightened, the rotor bobbing up and down once in response. That was the closest the ship could come to a nod.  
  
Okay, so they hadn’t killed each other. That was good. The Doctor may have barricaded himself somewhere deep within the ship but he’d have to come out sometime. If she staked out the kitchen long enough he was bound to turn up. Time Lord or not, he had to eat, and she wagered the TARDIS would be on her side. They had, after all, teamed up before when it was beneficial to Rose and/or the Doctor.  
  
Eventually she got bored waiting and went to find something to do. She located the anti-gravity room and decided to go for a spin. Then the TARDIS opened up a music library she’d never seen before. All she had to do was select a song and it would instantly fill the room with the clearest, crispest sound she’d ever heard. Old tracks she’d only heard fuzzy recordings of from the 1920s and music that had been released the week she joined the TARDIS crew, they both sounded the same.  
  
She found her mum’s favorite album from the 60’s and was able to get the TARDIS to give it to her on a CD. She had a small collection of things she’d gathered to give them when she got home. Clothes, trinkets, books, movies, and other souvenirs she’d found that she thought one of them. She’d even bought a dress for Annalise and a long-lasting spray tan because, despite the fiasco that had happened at Leo’s birthday, she wasn’t gonna break it off with Martha’s dad any time soon.  
  
When she got hungry for lunch she headed over to the kitchen and, to her surprise, the Doctor and Rose were already there making lunch together. Happy. Not glaring at, or ignoring, each other. She put her hand on her hip and watched them. They’d always been well coordinated and in sync with each other with certain tasks, but this was different. Just the way they moved…  
  
Hang on. Was that–? Yep. Rose was wearing his Oxford. The one from yesterday, by the looks of it.  
  
 _Oh my God. Did they…? Hallelujah!_ “Well it’s about damn time,” she said loudly.  
  
Both of them jumped and turned around at the same time.  
  
“I mean, really, look at the pair of you. Couldn’t get more obvious if you wore matching t-shirts that said ‘just shagged.’”  
  
The Doctor tilted his head thoughtfully. “You know, I think I know where we could find a pair.”  
  
“Don’t you dare,” Martha warmed. “I swear I won’t come within fifty feet of you. I don’t care if you get in trouble or something–those shirts will be gone before you’re gettin’ my help.”   
  
“I’m pretty sure that violates the companion code,” the Doctor mused. Martha rolled her eyes. Companion code her arse.  
  
“But, hey, if we went to America then nobody would know what they meant.” Rose pointed out.  
  
“Oi, don’t encourage him. And I think they’d figure it out.” She grumbled and sat down at the table. She cocked her head to the side and observed them as they got back to work. Grilled cheese sandwiches, by the look of it.   
  
“If you don’t mind, there’re a few places we need to stop today.”  
  
“There are?” the Doctor asked in surprise. “Since when?”  
  
“Since–well, since whenever you two….” She cocked her head to the side and wagged her eyebrows once. “There’s some people that owe me money.”  
  
Rose shrieked a laugh and whirled around, spatula in hand. “You’re joking!”   
  
Martha grinned broadly.  
  
“You _bet_ on us?!”  
  
“You bet I did. And most of the time it wasn’t even me that instigated it. Oh, don’t look at me like that. You two have been obvious for ages. Every time you introduce me to people you’ve met before they ask me if you two have shacked up yet. Well, not in those exact words exactly, but some of them wagered how long it would take and I took the bet. I think Sarah Jane’s the only one who didn’t. …The TARDIS probably would’ve bet if she could’ve.”  
  
“I’ll bet Jack made a few bets himself,” Rose muttered to the Doctor. “Wouldn’t be surprised if Mum and Mickey had as well.”  
  
“We’ll start on Ritquer Minor,” Martha went on. “That merchant that sold you that gold dress owes me 90 Frikiks and that red velvet dress with the white sash.”  
  
The Doctor sighed loudly and rubbed his eyes. “Please tell me you’re joking.”  
  
“Nope. You owe me for everything the pair of you have put me through. Honestly, the tension between you two was driving even the TARDIS mad.”  
  
The lights in the flickered twice and the hum around them once again grew louder. He grumbled irritably.   
  
Rose rolled her eyes dramatically and turned back to the stove. The Doctor kept muttering darkly all through the rest of the meal preparations and well into lunch. Martha mostly ignored him, exchanging the occasional glance with Rose who seemed to be torn between amusement and annoyance at both of them.   
  
Martha would’ve been able to take the occasional irritated looks tossed her away more seriously if they weren’t both positively glowing. Seriously, though, it was about damn time. Hopefully now that they’d finally got to it, things would be better. She’d probably have to put up with a lot of PDA but that she’d rather that than them blatantly denying their feelings every bloody day. And she trusted the TARDIS to prevent her from walking in on them.  
  
 _You’d better_ , she added with a dark glare at the wall.   
  
When they were done eating, Martha informed him that she hadn’t been joking and she wanted to collect. He scowled and pointed one finger at firmly. “Just how many bets are you in on, Miss Jones?”  
  
“Oooh…difficult to say. I have them written down somewhere. I think it’s around thirty.”   
  
Rose’s forehead hit the table with a loud _thunk_.  
  
“What? I told you the two of you were obvious. Though I’m pretty sure a bunch of ‘em weren’t entirely serious about honoring the bets so… let’s say about twenty?”  
  
“Fine. I’ll take you to _one_. Ritquer Minor, you said?”  
  
“Hey!”   
  
“Be happy I’m taking you at all,” he growled. “It’s a bit rude, y’know, to bet on our romantic lives.”  
  
“Not my fault you two act like you’re goin’ at it like rabbits all the time. Haven’t you ever noticed how shocked people are when they find out you two weren’t together like that?”  
  
“Not the point.”   
  
“Whatever. Oh, and by the way, I’m just gonna say this now. No shagging in the console room or the library. I don’t care if it’s your bloody ship and you think you have the right to get it on wherever you want. I live here too and I don’t fancy an eyeful. I walked in on Tish and her boyfriend once and I am in no hurry for a repeat of that.”   
  
“Fine.”  


~*~

  
  
  
The Doctor, as promised, took her to Ritquer Minor and while she went to collect her winnings, he and Rose browsed the shops again. But over the course of the next week, the TARDIS just so happened to land four more places where Martha had won a bet.  
  
They started really travelling again, not just taking vacations. Instead of theme parks, malls, and resorts, they went to new planets just to explore, they bounced around Earth’s past and far future–enough in both directions that they wouldn’t be reminded too much of Bridgeton. They set the coordinates to random and let the ship take them wherever. They got involved in a few skirmishes and thwarted several invasions, on Earth and on other worlds. Good days and bad days–days they wanted to last forever and some that couldn’t end fast enough.   
  
There were days the two of them never made an appearance and it didn’t take a genius to figure out what was going on. It was a bit annoying to be left on her own all day, though there was no shortage of things for her to do on the TARDIS. At least she didn’t have to put up with the bloody sexual tension any longer.   
  
They ran for their lives. Sometimes they made it to safety and other times they weren’t quite fast enough and they got hauled off to somewhere nasty and had to escape. The Doctor got himself arrested a few times, predictably, and Rose and Martha had to bail him out. Rose, since she was now technically his ‘mate’ in the eyes of many legal systems and societies, had little trouble doing this on her own.   
  
“See?” Martha said loudly as they strolled out of the prison after the second time Rose had gotten him out. “Shagging has other benefits to.”  
  
Later, Rose laughed, “His face! I swear he about regenerated on the spot!”  
  
They had a few close calls on the planets with more mannerly societies, places were rules on public displays of affection mirrored the standards the Doctor had described on Gallifrey, if not stricter. On one such planet, she turned her back for just a few seconds and when she looked back, the two of them had slipped away. She found them a few minutes later in an alley snogging each other’s brains out and getting a bit too randy for public even on a more liberal planet. Before she could open her mouth to tell them to knock it off, a man in an apron came out an open door further down the alley, and unceremoniously tossed a bucket of cold water on them. Rose shrieked in surprise and the Doctor hollered an insult at the man, who insulted him right back. Then Rose got in on it, and Martha had to drag them both away.   
  
But they were always laughing by the end of it.   
  
Seeing them together and happy caused Martha’s thoughts to turn to her family. She wondered how Leo and his wife and their daughter were doing. Her mum. Tish. Had her dad and the Barbie reconciled yet? She knew time was relative so, really, no time had passed at all for them–but, with that same mindset, an eternity had passed for them. It hurt her head to think about but she missed them all the same.  
  
Yet not enough to give up traveling. She loved it just too much. It was horrible and ugly but wonderful and beautiful and just so much _better_ than her old everyday life.   
  
The beginning of the end came on an ordinary day. They got up, they all ate breakfast together, and the Doctor talked about the planet he was taking them to. It sounded pretty and promised to be a fun day.   
  
Well, he missed the mark and landed on a planet he’d never been to before. The inhabitants were very human-like but their skin tones were just slightly off, their eye colors too bright. After their incident months before when the Doctor was mistaken for a polygamist, he’d been very careful to not hold both their hands at once–or at all–if he didn’t know for sure the small gesture wouldn’t get them hauled off. So he hadn’t considered there would be a society where Martha wouldn’t be allowed to walk around alone, unmarried.   
  
The Doctor had his arm around Rose’s shoulders and Martha was trailing behind them just giving them some space and taking in the local architecture–her travels had given her a new admiration for buildings and the uniqueness of each on. Next thing she knew, she was boxed in by three men with skin the color of whiskey and one with peach, wearing identical grey uniforms.  
  
They didn’t touch her but they had her trapped and their expressions were grim. “Where is your husband?” demanded one of the darker skinned men.  
  
Martha glanced over her shoulder. The Doctor and Rose had their backs to her and hadn’t noticed her problem yet. “I-I don’t have one,” she replied nervously. “I’m not married.”  
  
She was seized from behind. She screamed, “GET OFF ME!” as the paler man slapped cuffs around her wrists, securing them tightly in front of her.  
  
“HEY! LET HER GO.” the Doctor roared.   
  
The Doctor and Rose came storming back up the road towards them. The officers turned to face them, ready for a fight.  
  
“Let her go!” Rose repeated furiously.  
  
“Silence, woman,” said the pale man.  
  
“ _Excuse you?_ ”   
  
“Sir, control your woman.”  
  
The Doctor’s eyes narrowed slightly and pulled out his physic paper, flashing it at them. “I am Sir Doctor, this is Dame Rose, and you will treat her with as much respect as you treat me.” He gave them a moment to read it then stuffed it in his pocket. “Now, I demand you explain yourselves at once.”   
  
The officers looked at him like he was stupid. Martha couldn’t figure it out. What had she done to deserve arrest? Obviously these people were sexist but she hadn’t done anything outlandish, had she?   
  
“You know the law,” answered the shortest of the dark-skinned men. “Women are forbidden to be in public without a man. Unmarried, too. At her age, you know what that means. And look at how she’s dressed.”  
  
She was wearing black trousers and a tank top. Oh, so scandalous. “And what are you going to do with me?” Martha asked tightly.  
  
Pain exploded across her cheek and she stumbled back. She heard one of them snap, “Shut up, whore.”  
  
Rose was livid, eyes blazing (though not quite glowing), she took a single, menacing step forward. “Touch her again and I will knock all of you into the next galaxy.”  
  
The officer started to rebuke her but then he glanced at the Doctor and swallowed back his insult.  
  
“Now answer her question,” the Doctor ordered.   
  
“She will be taken to the magistrate for violations of the escorting laws and suspected prostitution.”  
  
The Doctor looked like he wanted to knock their heads together. “Well,” he said after a moment, “I assure you, Martha is a very respectable woman and she’s with me.”  
  
The pale officer’s beady eyes narrowed. “And who are you to her?”  
  
“She is our friend and travelling companion.”   
  
“Are you related to her by blood or marriage?”  
  
“No, but–”  
  
“Then you were not permitted to escort. She will be taken before the magistrate to determine her sentencing and, nobility or not, you are lucky I do not take the pair of you as well.”   
  
The two time travelers continued to argue against her arrest but the officers point blank refused to release Martha. The Doctor, fed up with trying to reason with them, whipped out the sonic screwdriver and aimed it at something just over their heads. A second later that something exploded and Martha didn’t waste a single second, elbowing the man holding her in the gut and slamming her heel into his shin. She felt his grip slacken and she jerked away from him.  
  
“Run for it!” the Doctor yelled and the three of them went tearing up the sidewalk. They weaved through the crowds and buildings, back to the street corner where they’d parked the TARDIS with the officers hot in pursuit. They made it in just in time, slamming the door in the fastest officer (the pale one’s) face. They heard the thud as he collided with the wood and scrambled over to the console screen to watch the show.   
  
The other three officers had arrived, panting for breath, and watched their fellow scramble to his feet. “Come out of there!” he demanded as he shook the door handle. “Come out of there at once!”  
  
The TARDIS hummed indignantly at behind manhandled. An electrical current whizzed through the door handle and zapped his hand. He jerked it away with a surprised yelp and put the singed digit into his mouth. Scowling, the officer glared at the door, removing his finger from his mouth to growl, “Stupid piece of junk.”   
  
“Let ‘im have it, Old Girl,” the Doctor ordered.   
  
The door closest to him flew open outwards and smacked into him, sending him flying. Through the door they saw him lying flat on his back, gazing blearily at his comrades.   
  
“And that’s for callin’ my ship a piece of junk!” the Doctor shouted at him. The TARDIS let out a short, sharp rumble that sounded suspiciously like a ‘hmph’ as she pulled the door shut.   
  
He nodded huffily, agreeing with her, and flipped the dematerialization switch. “Right,” he said once they were safely in the vortex. He pulled the screen around to the keyboard and his fingers flew over the keys. “I’ve marked this planet as one we shouldn’t return to until I can do further research. I doubt that law lasts forever and, really, it’s a pretty place. Maybe we can return once women have a considerable more amount of freedom?”   
  
“Speaking of freedom,” Martha hinted and held up her cuffed wrists.  
  
“Oh, sorry.” He pulled out the sonic and freed her from the restraints. She frowned at the angry red marks they’d left on her wrists. He did, too, and sniffed the cuffs then lightly probed the inside of them with his tongue.   
  
“And of course you licked it.” Rose grumbled.   
  
He made a face and stuck his tongue out. “Blah-ah-ah.” He swiped his sleeve across it. “That was–” Looking down at the cuffs in surprise, “Oh, that’s ingenious, that is. The cuffs are coated in an acidic compound. It’s brilliant, really. Put these cuffs on someone and they get the compound on their skin. Takes a little bit to kick in, of course, plenty of time to get them somewhere secure then apply the counteragent. But if someone tries to escape with the cuffs on, they won’t be able to get the compound off themselves so they’ll have to go back! Or, well, they don’t have to, I suppose. But I don’t imagine their hands will remain attached to their bodies for very long once the reaction begins.”  
  
“WHAT?!” Martha shrieked. “I’M GONNA LOSE MY HANDS?!”  
  
“Relax, you’re not gonna lose your hands. I’ll get a sample and whip up the counteragent. Shouldn’t take too long.”  
  
“And if it does?   
  
“What about you?” Rose demanded. “You _licked_ it!”   
  
“I should be alright. But I’ll lick the counteragent, too, if it makes you feel better.”  
  
“It will.”  
  
Martha and the Doctor stopped in what looked like a chemistry lab–a room she’d never even seen before. While he went searching for something, she peered around the room curiously. She’d taken her fair share of science courses but she had a feeling she’d be lost in here without guidance. She wondered if he had samples of the elements missing from the periodic table in her time. Half of this stuff probably didn’t even exist on Earth. The Doctor, of course, knew everything in here, its properties, and what it could be used for.   
  
He returned with a toolbox (bigger on the inside, no doubt) of what he called, “Just some basics, but I think they should be enough.” Then took her to the infirmary.   
  
He sat her down in the examination chair, swiped the parts of her skin covered in the compound, then rolled over a portable sink and turned it on, instructing her to stick her hands underneath. She did as instructed and he turned to one of the many machines to begin analyzing it.  
  
Her wrists were starting to sting now and she wondered how long it would be before she had indents in her skin. “It doesn’t seem to be washing off,” she told him.  
  
“I suspected it wouldn’t,” he muttered, staring it the screen. “Like I said, this would have to be something that couldn’t be removed without turning yourself in. This is something the average person wouldn’t be able to remedy in time. Good thing I’m not an average person.”  
  
“They’re stinging. Is it–is it eating through my skin?”  
  
“Just keep them under the water. Trust me, you’ll know if it starts eating through your skin.”  
  
“How long do you reckon I have?”  
  
He glanced at her. “Your biological composition and the density of your muscles and bones, maybe an hour and a half. Approximately two hours from the time of application.”  
  
Martha nodded slowly. “And how’s your tongue?”   
  
“It’s fine. Really, I didn’t get any stuck on it like you did. I just sort of sampled it.” The machine beeped, a window appearing on the screen. His eyes scanned the strange symbols and he muttered something she couldn’t understand. He touched the screen and the window disappeared, a new one replacing it. He entered in some information and the machine made a loud whirling sound.  
  
The Doctor took a step back, shoving his hands in his pockets.  
  
“You really need to tell those things to display English.”   
  
“No I don’t,” he replied. “Because anyone who can’t read Gallifreyan has no business handling half of these things. Everything that you’re qualified to use and the medicines you’d need I’ve already relabeled or reprogrammed to English for you.”  
  
“Wait. That was Gallifreyan?”  
  
He nodded. “Yes.”  
  
“But where all the lines and circles and things?”  
  
“That’s Circular Gallifreyan. Just another way to write the same language. But it was something that came about near the end of Gallifrey’s time as a way for us to communicate without the Daleks or any of our enemies being able to translate any messages they may intercept. Though up until the Time War it was used as a form of art by many.”  
  
“So why do you write in the super-secret code instead of that?”  
  
The Doctor flinched ever so lightly. “During…the Time War I… I, like all the others, had to learn to write this way. I spent so long writing in Circular that it eventually became habit. There are those left in the universe who could read this–” he nodded to the screen “–but I am the last one left who can read Circular.”  
  
She decided to leave it alone, recognizing a sensitive subject when she saw one. “I’ve always wondered but I never asked–why doesn’t the TARDIS translate Gallifreyan?”  
  
He was quiet for a moment. “Three reasons. One: she wasn’t initially programmed to. The Time Lords never expected someone not native to Gallifrey to be operating one of these ships, or even riding in one. Two: Gallifreyan is so more complex than English it would be difficult for her to adequately translate it. And three: she’s respecting my privacy.”   
  
Martha snorted. “And what about us? You can understand everything we write or say!”  
  
“Yes, but I actually speak your language. I haven’t relied on the translator for years for it. I suppose if you wrote something I was absolutely not meant to see she would translate it into one of the few languages I don’t know.”  
  
 _I’ll remember that_ , she thought.   
  
The machine beeped again and he scanned the results. “Excellent!” He immediately began pulling things out of his toolbox. Oh, yes. Definitely bigger on the inside. “This won’t take long at all. I’ll have you fixed up in a jiffy, Martha!”  
  
She smiled. He moved quickly, pulling out tiny vials of chemicals–both liquid and solid–and dropped them into the two beakers he was working with.   
  
Pain suddenly flared in her wrists, starting with her left, then her right a few seconds later, and she gasped, yanking them out of the water sharply. The angry red marks on her wrists had increased in width and in the middle were fissures that circled her entire wrist. She wasn’t bleeding, though, which meant it had to be cauterizing as it went, but the sight somehow made it worse. She let out a scream of pain and panic.  
  
He was at her side in an instant, examining her wrists. “No, no, no, no–it’s too soon, it’s way too soon.” He raked his hands through his hair. “Think, think, think–oh. Oh, that’s clever,” he growled. “Oh, that’s very clever. Feel something burning your skin, what’s the first thing you do? Try to wash it off. Only instead of helping it speeds up the process.” He shut off the tap.  
  
Martha let out a choked whimper.   
  
“Hang on, Martha.” He instructed and spun around, yanking open one of the drawers. He rummaged through the contents, knocking things onto the floor in his haste.   
  
Rose appeared in the doorway with a mug of tea in her hands. “What’s happening?” she demanded, chest heaving like she’d sprinted the entire way.   
  
“It’s eating through my skin!” Martha shrieked.  
  
“Rose, that towel over there–get the water off her wrists, it’s making it worse.”   
  
“Oh, God,” she gasped. Rose set the mug down and snatched up the towel, racing over to the chair. Martha held her shaking wrists out while Rose patted them down quickly. “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she repeated.   
  
Martha yelped when the chain of Rose’s necklace bumped against her wrist. “Sorry!”  
  
She started to put it under her shirt but the Doctor stopped her with a cry of “No, don’t! It’s got the compound on it now. Get it off!”   
  
Rose yanked the thing over her head and tossed it aside before going back to patting Martha’s wrists dry. When she was done, she set tossed it aside since it, too, now had the acid on it. Mindful of the dangerous spots, she examined the grooves in Martha’s wrists. “Doctor, you might want to hurry. I think it’s getting close to the bone.”   
  
Martha had been trying to stop her tears but she started sobbing harder when she heard that. Rose wrapped her arm around her shoulder comfortingly. “It’s okay, he’s almost done. …Doctor, please tell me you’re almost done.”  
  
“Almost done!” he shouted without looking away from his work.   
  
A minute later, he whirled around with a large beaker in his hand. “Hands together over the sink, now!” He barked. Martha did as instructed and he immediately started pouring the counteragent over her wrists. Almost immediately the burning began to fade where the liquid hit. He rotated each one individually, making sure that the liquid covered every millimeter, sliding down and through the deep grooves.  
  
Slowly, her sobs quieted to sighs of relief as the stinging faded to the bliss of cool numbness.   
  
“Rose, fetch some gauze,” he ordered calmly.   
  
Rose did as she was asked. He continued to pour the counteragent over her wrists, now daring to touch her skin to massage it into the places that hadn’t been eaten away. When the beaker was almost empty, he set it to the side and took the gauze from Rose. He slowly, carefully wrapped her wrists, slinging the gauze around her thumbs to hold it in place, and then secured it with tape.   
  
“Get some of that on your tongue,” Rose ordered. He sighed and dabbed his tongue against the edge of the beaker.   
  
“Happy?”  
  
“Extremely.”  
  
“Did you get any on your hands?”  
  
“No.”   
  
“Good.” He went over to the towel, pinching the edge between his fingertips and held it up gingerly. He inspected it for a moment then tossed it into the incinerator in the wall. Rose’s necklace had already been eaten through so, to protect the key, he snapped a new break in it and slid the key off before tossing the chain pieces into the incinerator as well.  
  
Rose tucked the key in her pocket and sighed. “Thank goodness.”  
  
“How are you feeling?” the Doctor asked Martha.  
  
“Numb,” she replied. “Actually I…I can’t feel my hands so well. Can’t–can’t move ‘em, either.”  
  
“Nerve, tendon, muscle, and skin damage. Don’t worry they’re fixable. We just need to give the counteragent time to settle into your skin and eradicate any remaining traces of the acid. Should take, oh, say, a few hours.”  
  
“In the mean time I say we go back there and give those bastards hell.” Rose spat. “This is totally barbaric and sick.”  
  
“True. But you’ve got to admit, it’s a great way to control crime. Not that a woman walking around on her own should be a crime,” he added quickly, “but if a murderer, thief, or a rapist tried to get away and didn’t go back, he’d lose his hands. Not as much of a danger then.”   
  
“So we’re not going back?”  
  
He shook his head. “No. The last thing we need is one of us accidentally getting cuffed as well.” He lowered his head to look in Martha’s eyes. “Hey, it’ll be okay. I told you you’d keep your hands. They’ll be good as new soon, don’t you worry.”  
  
“Will I scar?” Martha asked.   
  
“Probably but you should have full use of your hands again by tomorrow.”  
  
She nodded. “Thank you.”   
  
The Doctor smiled.   
  
Dinner was a strange affair. Since Martha couldn’t use her hands, the Doctor volunteered to help. She was surprised and sort of embarrassed but she knew there really wasn’t any other option so she sat there with her arms in slings and let him spoon feed her like she was an infant.   
  
When enough time had passed, he unwrapped her wrists and began the process of repairing her arms, which meant she had to sit still with her hands underneath a laser-like beam that he used to reconnect the severed nerves. Pain pricked along her arms as the nerve endings were reconnected and sparked back to life. It was nothing compared to the pain from earlier. He moved onto the tendons next, using a combination of an injection and another laser to repair the severed sinew. Lastly came the muscles–two injections in each arm followed by a quick swipe from the same laser he’d used for the tendon repair. He glanced at her nervously every so often throughout the whole thing like he was waiting for something to happen.  
  
“What’s the matter?” she asked.  
  
The Doctor hesitated, pursing his lips. “Do you want to go home?” he blurted out.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Do you want to go home?” he repeated. “To stop traveling?”  
  
“W-why? Do you…want me to leave?”  
  
“Not really, no, but–but it’s just, well, I’ve had companions leave because of injuries like this. Sometimes not even quite as bad as this. They realized they really _could_ get seriously hurt with me and decided they’d had enough.”  
  
“I… well, no. I don’t…I don’t _want_ to leave.”  
  
“But?” he prompted.  
  
“But,” she sighed. “It’s been nearly a month since Bridgeton and I am happy to not be stuck on Earth in one timeline, but I… I kind of…”   
  
“Go on.”  
  
“I miss my family,” she finished quietly.   
  
He paused for a moment, his eyes softening sympathetically. “Of course you do.”   
  
“But I don’t want to stop travelling!” she added quickly. “Can’t I just visit? Rose told me you used to do the same for her.”  
  
“I did,” he confirmed with a nod. “Sure, I’ll take you home for a visit. How long do you want to stay?”  
  
“A few days, maybe.”   
  
“Reasonable enough. Alright. But it won’t be tomorrow. I’ve already got somewhere planned and I think you’ll enjoy it.” He smiled. “But after that we’ll take you home.”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“Just…just don’t expect me to go near your mum. I really don’t like getting slapped by mums.”  
  
Martha laughed. “I’ll talk to her. Though I can’t imagine she’ll be too happy about these.” She gestured to her wrists. “How bad’s the scarring going to be?”  
  
“Probably comparable to a minor burn scar.”  
  
Sure enough, after he’d run the dermal regenerator across the wounds, and the skin had regrown and knitted together, there were two waxy-looking strips around each of her wrists. She sighed sadly and examined the two scars. Still, it could be a lot worse, she reasoned, and they could be covered with makeup if necessary. Or thick bracelets. She’d think of something.   
  
He wrapped her wrists again with a sturdy material and ordered her to keep them as still as possible for the rest of the night while they continued to heal. “You’re going to probably feel weird sensations or pains for a while. So take this before you go to sleep.” He held up a white pill. “It’s a sedative. Should keep you under for ten hours, roughly.”  
  
She started to reach for it and then sighed. “Uh, Doctor?”  
  
“Oh, right.”  
  
“Um, maybe it’d just be better if I slept here. I mean without either of my hands there isn’t much I can do.”  
  
“Well, if you want. Looks like the TARDIS agrees.” He nodded to the bed that had just appeared in the corner. “Come on, I’ll help you get settled. You don’t mind sleeping in your clothes?”  
  
“The number of times I fell asleep fully dressed during med school…”  
  
“Let me guess–passed out in the library on top of a textbook?”  
  
“Twice a semester.”  
  
The Doctor laughed and helped her out of the chair.   
  


~*~

  
  
Rose was already curled up in bed when the Doctor finally arrived. He unbuttoned his jacket and Oxford, removed his tie, and toed off his trainers before slipping under the sheets with her. Sliding one arm around her midsection, he pulled her close and kissed her forehead.   
  
She hummed contently, fingers tracing idly along his bicep. “So, how is she?”  
  
“Better. Whole process went without a hitch. I told her to keep her hands immobilized for the rest of the night and she decided to sleep in the infirmary. Little bit of scarring but she should recover just fine.”  
  
Rose was quiet for a moment. “Her wrists–I can’t get it out of my head–it was just like something had cut out her skin and–” she shuddered. “How could they do that to people? I know, I know, it is a good defense but it’s–it’s still just…”   
  
He kissed her soothingly, his hand slipping under her top to run up and down her back. “I know.”  
  
“But you won’t stop them? If it’d been me, you’d have gone back in a heartbeat.”  
  
His expression darkened. “If she had lost her hands, I would be there now.”  
  
“You still should be.”  
  
“It’s just another shoddy legal system; every planet has at least one. But there was no sign of slavery, invasion, plague, or war. That kind of practice wouldn’t last forever, just like the sexist laws that caused this. Besides, we’re a bit busy right now.”  
  
She raised her eyebrows.   
  
“Martha wants to go home.”  
  
“What?!” she gasped, sitting up. “She’s leaving?!”   
  
She was already halfway out of bed, ready to go convince her friend to not go, when he caught her arm. “Not go home to stay,” he assured her. She paused. “She just wants to visit her family.”  
  
Rose exhaled in relief and sank back down into the bed. “Oh. Okay. Okay. Right,” she mumbled as he fixed the covers around her. “…Didn’t her mum slap you?”  
  
“Yours did, too.”  
  
“Well, yeah, but you made me miss a year. Her mum didn’t really have a good reason compared to that.”  
  
The Doctor shrugged. “So I guess we just won’t go near her while we’re there.”  
  
“She’s not telling her family the truth, then?”   
  
“I don’t know. I’m going to have to land her within a few days of her departure, though, so it won’t cause a fuss. I _really_ don’t want to give the rest of her family a reason to have a go at me.”  
  
“And she’s got med school to finish.”  
  
He blinked in surprise then sighed heavily.  
  
“You forgot, didn’t you?”  
  
“Yes. She’s so far beyond a student now. But I definitely need to make sure we land near the time of departure.”  
  
“Are we going tomorrow?”  
  
He shook his head. “No, actually, the day after. I’ve got a stop planned for tomorrow. Been planning it for a while, actually. Now seems like a good time, considering.”  
  
“Considering what?”  
  
He smiled and didn’t respond.  
  
“Right, okay. And the odds of us actually getting there?”  
  
“Very good,” he replied. Rose arched her eyebrows so he continued, “I’ve asked the TARDIS to be nice. I think she’ll make sure we get there.”  
  
The volume of the hum around them increased slightly.   
  
“See?” He grinned cheerfully and, rolling her eyes fondly, she laughed.   
  
“So where are we going?”  
  
“Ah, can’t tell you.”  
  
She narrowed her eyes. “Really?”  
  
“Nope. It’s a secret.”  
  
Rose grinned wickedly, rolling them so he was flat on his back, and she was straddling his waist. “You sure about that?”  
  
“Absolutely.”  
  
She leaned forward, her lips hovering just inches from his. He tried to kiss her but she backed just out of his each. “Bet I can convince you.”  
  
“Bet you can’t.”  
  
“You’re on.” 


	51. Midspring

  
  
When Rose opened her eyes the first thing she saw was a mop of brown hair. She blinked and glanced down. The Doctor’s body was curled around her and his head was resting against her chest. He appeared to be sleeping. She started to shift into a more comfortable position but his arms tightened around her. He was awake after all.  
  
“Don’t move,” he whispered. She settled back down. “I’m listening to your heart.”   
  
She smiled and slowly ran her fingers through his hair. He made a quiet noise of contentment. After a few minutes of this, he began to tap out the beat of her heart on her back. _Tap-tap. Tap-tap._ Then he changed it up. Alternating between two fingers, he tapped out a new beat. _Tap-tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap._ She tried to figure out why that was so familiar.  
  
“Is that yours?” she asked softly.  
  
He nodded and replied at the same volume, “Identical to yours, just doubled.”   
  
The Doctor tilted his head and smiled at her, stretching up to press a gentle kiss to her lips. “Morning,” he whispered after. “If you’re all done sleeping, we should get up.”  
  
“Mmm, I think I want to stay in bed.”  
  
He rolled his eyes. “You and your sleep.”  
  
“Who said anything about sleeping?”   
  
He chuckled quietly and kissed her once more, briefly, then sat up. She let out a whimper of protest.  
  
“Hey–”  
  
“As much as I’d like to stay, the TARDIS has informed me that Martha is awake and would very much like to regain the use of her hands. There was also something about relocating you and the bed if I didn’t go now.”  
  
She blew a puff of air through her lips.   
  
He leaned back down and kissed her forehead. “Sleep as long as you want, but don’t forget, we do have somewhere to be and as I recall, you still don’t know where it is.”  
  
She frowned. “You cheated.”  
  
“‘All’s fair in love and war,’” he quoted.   
  
She stuck her tongue out at him then rolled over. He chuckled quietly then quickly gathered his clothes, got dressed, and headed out of the room. She waited until he was gone then sighed heavily and stretched her entire body. She sat up and massaged the crick out of her neck.  
  
After a quick shower, she joined them in the infirmary. Martha was sitting in the exam chair with both her hands unbound and the Doctor was having her do certain movements and motions with her hands. She glanced up at Rose, smiled, and waved, wiggling her fingers all around.   
  
“So how’s it lookin’?” Rose asked.  
  
“Motor functions seem mostly back to normal, and nerves are responding appropriately. Really, the only lasting damage are the scars, but they’ll fade over time.” He patted Martha’s arm. “Meanwhile, I recommend you come up with a good explanation.”  
  
“What? ‘Alien coppers tried to arrest me’ isn’t good enough?”  
  
“Well, if you wanna get sectioned…”   
  
They ate breakfast and Martha delighted in being able to feed herself once more. Then she went to shower (“Dress for warm weather!” the Doctor ordered) and Rose went to change out of her track pants into a denim skirt with black knee-length leggings that went with her light pink t-shirt.   
  
An hour later when they’d landed, Rose opened the door eagerly to see this planet he had refused to tell her about.   
  
There was pink everywhere. The blossoms on the trees and bushes, the grass, the moss on the rocks, and even the bark was tinged pink. They’d landed on a small island in the middle of a large pond surrounded by many similar islands. Each were connected to each other by small bridges that seemed to be part of the land itself. There was a light mist in the air and the water in the pond (slightly pink) rippled subtly. Below the surface they glimpsed a pair of yellow fish zip by.   
  
“It’s so…pink.” Martha remarked after a moment.  
  
“It’s spring time,” the Doctor explained behind them. They stepped out of the TARDIS and he shut the door behind them. He spun around in a circle, admiring the place. “Everything here blooms pink and as they mature they change to the proper color. In two months time this place will be every color of the rainbow, in dozens of shades. Look, see?” he pointed. “Those flowers are already turning purple.”  
  
“It’s beautiful,” Rose sighed. “But there’s nothing here.”  
  
“Oh, I wouldn’t say there’s nothing.” He raised his voice and called out, “Hello there! Sorry for the scare. We come in peace.”  
  
Rose followed his gaze over to a large white flower a few islands away. It was about the size of a human, had a dark green stem that paled towards the top, and white blossoms that cascaded down the front oddly, and–hang on. Were those clothes? For a moment it remained completely still. And then from what she had thought to be the back of the stem, two eyes appeared. Then she noticed a squashed nose and a mouth parted beneath it. Two arms detached themselves from the main stem and the bottom split into two legs.   
  
“A Faloran,” the Doctor explained.   
  
“Spell that,” Martha ordered.   
  
“F-a-l-o-r-a-n.”  
  
She mouthed it to herself for a moment. “Oh. I thought it sounded familiar. Flora, like flowers.”  
  
“Exactly. The added ‘a’ is to distinguish them from non-sentient plant life.”   
  
The Faloran seemed to glide across the ground. At first Rose thought it was female since it was wearing a skirt the exact shade of the petals, which she now realized were more like hair, but on closer inspection she realized it was a male. Apart from the skirt he wore a sash across one shoulder that covered most of his front.   
  
He stopped on the bridge between the next island and theirs. “Strangers,” he greeted in a light timbre.   
  
“Hello!” the Doctor chirped. “I apologize for the scare but do your people trade with off-worlders?”  
  
 _Trade?_ Rose looked at him in surprise.   
  
The Faloran considered them for a moment. “Yes. But could you please move your ship out of this area?”  
  
“If he tries to move it out of the area he’ll probably wind up on the next planet over,” Rose said, much to the Doctor’s chagrin. “Is there a problem?”  
  
“Today we celebrate Sorkora. Some of festivities tonight will take place along these islands. We are in the middle of preparations.”  
  
The Doctor’s eyes lit up. “Really?”  
  
“What’s Sorkora?” Rose asked.  
  
“It’s a holiday,” the Doctor explained. “Today is the exact middle of spring. It’s a celebration of new things and remembrance of old ones.” He looked at them thoughtfully then asked the Faloran, “I don’t suppose outsiders can participate?”  
  
“I…am just an apprentice decorator,” he said. “I-I’m not allowed to make such calls. Unless–forgive me for assuming–but you look human.”  
  
“We are,” Rose said. _Not all of us, thank God_ , she silently added.   
  
“Then, yes, you are welcome.” He smiled friendlily. “Humans are always welcome here. Your ship, though, it’s really in the way.”  
  
The Doctor rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I’ll tell you what. If you tell us how to get to the town then you can decorate her. No paint or anything, but if you’d like to put flowers or vines around the outsides, then by all means.”  
  
He considered the proposition then moved to inspect the TARDIS up close. He walked around the sides, looking at the top, and feeling the exterior. He seemed surprise to discover it was made of wood but the same realization seemed to be enough to convince him. He turned back to the travelers. “You’re in the town outskirts right now,” he said. “You said you were looking to trade? And if you wish to participate I think you should wear the appropriate dress. You’ll want our mercantile islands. I can lead you there. I need to find my master and inform him of the new addition, anyway.” He eyed the TARDIS again.  
  
“You’re a slave?” Martha asked in surprise.  
  
The Faloran was baffled. “Slave?”  
  
“He’s an apprentice,” the Doctor corrected. “He’s training to be a decorator. By ‘master’ he means ‘teacher.’”  
  
She nodded, looking relieved.   
  
They accepted his offer and he introduced himself as Cloud. They followed him across the tiny islands and bridges towards the quite hum of voices they could hear. The Doctor asked him questions like what title he was hoping to be given (Painter), what year it was for them, what the village was called, and what kind of flower he was descended from, which lead to Rose asking what he was talking about.   
  
Cloud and all the people on this planet were descendants of a race created by fusing flower and human DNA in order to preserve aspects of Earth. They were much like Jabe, the Tree woman they had met on Platform One, from the Forest of Cheem. She had been a descendant of the original experiments. Both experimental races had been given their own planets made similarly to Earth. Unlike the Trees, this lot mostly kept to themselves, rarely venturing beyond the planet, never colonizing, but welcoming to outsiders, particularly humans, as they shared the same DNA.  
  
“Most villages have a standard trading system in place for visitors. There’s a monetary system for the locals but for outsiders like us they usually barter. I brought a lot of fruit, among other things. They love fruit.”   
  
“You know much about us,” Cloud said.  
  
“I know a lot about many things.”   
  
“What’s your name?”   
  
“Oh, sorry! I’m the Doctor, and this is Martha and Rose.”   
  
Cloud turned in surprise. “Your name is Rose? But that is a type of flower.”  
  
“I know a lot of humans named after flowers. It’s really common.”   
  
“Oh.”  
  
The entire village was built on islands in the middle of a large lake. The outer islands were further apart and connected by little bridges like the ones out where the TARDIS had landed. As they grew closer to the center of the village the space between islands decreased and the water became shallow enough that if someone wished to, one could hop or step through the water. Buildings started popping up, usually one on a smaller island, maybe two, and up to five on the larger islands.   
  
It was obvious on sight that while they were accustomed to alien visitors, the people here never ventured beyond their planet. There was almost no metal or steel anywhere. Everything was made of mud, grass, wood, and stone, held together with twine, vine, and twig. The denizens were descendants of genetic experiments who traded with off-worlders so there had to be technology somewhere, just not out in the open.   
  
The roads were unpaved but smooth from generations of feet treading the same paths. Where the roads ended, soft grass and moss provided a clear border and for the most part remained untrampled. Rose saw a recent set of footprints in the dirt and glanced at Cloud’s feet. They were mostly the same shape, although where there would be toes, his slanted into a point, like elf shoes in Christmas drawings. The point curved slightly indicating that it could be used for some sort of grip. She looked at his hands curiously. Four fingers and a thumb on each, but the tips were pointed much like his feet, but without the added curl.   
  
He really did seem to be a perfect blend of a human man and a white lily. Where he should have had hair, there were layers of long white petals, like those of a lily, which fell to mid-back. Looking around at the other Falorans (who were staring at their guests with interest) she saw they were all much the same. Their skin color varied in shades of greens and whites, and there were dozens of different petals and patterns, but they all looked like blooming flowers.  
  
“Are they blooming?” she asked the Doctor.   
  
“Yes,” he said, pleased.  
  
Martha looked around thoughtfully. “Don’t some flowers bloom in different seasons? How can they all be blooming?”  
  
“It was considered to be something that could cause discrimination,” he replied. “The scientists played around with the genetics so everyone would bloom in spring. Their petals will continue to grow until they reach a certain length, and then they’ll stay the same until early autumn when it starts getting cold. Then their hair will start to grow in quickly, usually the same colors and patterns as their petals, and the petals will fall out. They spend the winter looking mostly human. Then as it starts to get warm, their petals will start to grow and their hair is assimilated into them. It’s quite an interesting process that–”  
  
“Are you a scholar?” Cloud interrupted, glancing at him.  
  
The Doctor smiled. “Yes, I suppose you could say that. Planet-bound you may be, but your people are an important part of history. All of you,” he added when he noticed the disbelief on the young Faloran’s face. “Even decorators. _Especially_ decorators. You’re job is to make ordinary things beautiful. Life would be boring with beauty, don’t you think?”  
  
 _You did it again_ , Rose thought with a small smile. Made someone who’d probably never considered himself special beam with pride. She loved him for it.   
  
After giving them directions to a shop he knew selling the appropriate attire for the occasion, Cloud disappeared inside a cabin, presumably to speak to his master. The three of them headed off in the direction of the shop Cloud had spoken of. It was round and made of sturdy stone–a sign of wealth, according to the Doctor–painted a beautiful shade of sky blue.   
  
The door was open, inviting, and the Doctor’s head accidentally bumped the tiny bell above it, announcing their presence. He rubbed his forehead sourly.   
  
“Be right with you!” a female voice called from the back.  
  
The shop was comprised of one large room with a doorway in the back that led elsewhere. The room was filled with racks and shelves of clothes–dresses, skirts, trousers, shorts, sashes, wraps, and shirts–every color and shade of the rainbow. The right corner of the room was sectioned off by several curtains and looked like a changing room.  
  
A Faloran woman emerged from the back doorway a moment later. Her body was dark, greenish brown, that faded to pale near her head just like all the others, and her petals were layered thickly and orange around her head and a bright yellow the rest of the way. The dress she wore matched her petals, a thick, yet elegant skirt made from layers of silk, a tight fitting orange bodice, and matching bell sleeves with a split that ran from the shoulder, ending just before the hem.  
  
Her eyes widened when they found her customers. “Oh!”  
  
“Hello.” Rose waved.   
  
“Humans? Are you here to celebrate Sorkora?”  
  
“I guess we are.”  
  
“Well, then, you’ll all be needing dresses, of course.”  
  
“Ah, not me. I’m fine.” The Doctor held up his hands quickly. “But could you give me directions? I me særto gon fyu. Wihæk yâu sols ek fralïlaæc?”   
  
Rose blinked in surprise at the sudden block in her mind. It was tiny, so small she wouldn’t have probably noticed it if the Doctor hadn’t stopped speaking English at the exact same time. She glanced at Martha but she was just as confused, especially when the Faloran’s reply was also in the wrong language. She and the Doctor talked back and forth for a moment, neither seeming to be aware that the two humans were at a loss, until Rose poked him sharply in the ribs.  
  
“Will you speak English?” she demanded.  
  
He grinned unapologetically. “Sorry, but it was a secret. You’ll see. Sun Weaver will help you both find something to wear and I’ll be back soon.”  
  
Rose frowned. “Where are you going?”  
  
“Secret!” He repeated then turned back to the Faloran woman, Sun Weaver, and pulled a brown paper bag from his pocket. She retrieved a bowl from behind the counter and he dumped about ten pieces of fruit into it. He started talking in the Faloran’s language again, gesturing to each piece of fruit in turn while the shopkeeper listened intently, occasionally lifting one to inspect and sniffing it.   
  
Rose had her hands on her hips and Martha folded her arms, both of them quickly fed up with the gibberish.   
  
She felt the block in her mind disappear and exhaled in relief. “Two dresses, five pieces each.” Sun Weaver said and she and the Doctor shook hands. She carried the bowl into the back.  
  
Rose waited until she was out of sight then grabbed the Doctor by his tie and pulled him down to eye-level. He went without protest.   
  
“I don’t appreciate that.”  
  
“I told you it’s a se–”   
  
“It felt like someone slipped a wall between me an’ the TARDIS. Don’t do it again.”  
  
He made a face. “Sorry. I didn’t think about how it might feel to you.”   
  
“I didn’t feel anything,” Martha piped. “You all just stopped makin’ sense.”  
  
“That’s how it should’ve been.” The Doctor pointed to her. “I’ll be back later. Wish me luck!”  
  
“Um, good luck?” Rose laughed unsurely, eyebrows raised. “But where are you going?”  
  
He grinned, kissed her once on the lips, then whisked out of the shop.   
  
Rose watched him leave and when she turned back, Sun Weaver was staring at her curiously. “He is your husband?”   
  
“Well, no. Not technically.”  
  
“But you are courting.” It wasn’t a question.  
  
“Suppose so.”  
  
She nodded. “Well, I am Sun Weaver. You are…?”  
  
“I’m Martha,” the med student greeted. “This is Rose.”  
  
“Rose? But that is a flower.” She cocked her head like the very notion was baffling to her.   
  
“I’m gonna get that a lot today, aren’t I?” Rose sighed and glanced at Martha. “Good job your name’s not Lily or somethin’.”   
  
Sun Weaver looked her up and down, tapping her top lip. “Perhaps…no, no. I do not think you should dress as a rose.” She circled them both, looking up and down thoughtfully.   
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“It is custom during our festivals for us to dress as the flower we are descended from. Outsiders who join in are free to choose whichever flower they wish. Dressing you as a rose would be boring and predictable. Well, good thing we have plenty of time!”   
  
She stepped back and gestured to the desk where a single, thick book sat waiting. “Feel free to browse! I have something for all the flowers in there.  
  
Nothing with a lot of foofaraw, they both agreed on that straight off. They flitted through the pages, choosing the flowers they thought pretty while Sun Weaver moved around the racks, selecting the appropriate dresses. Then she showed them to the changing rooms. They took turns coming out to look at themselves in the full-length mirror and receive opinions from the other, as well as Sun Weaver, who also told them what flower the dress was based off of. They were all Earth flowers, too. Some from Rose and Martha’s time, they recognized those names, and some came from millennia after. Rose favored bright colors, nothing too vibrant, and particularly pastels. Martha stuck to more darker, muted colored dresses.  
  
Rose found one based off a light blue daisy that she really liked. Sun Weaver nodded, lips pressed together. “It does look good on you,” she decided after a moment. “That shade compliments your hair.”  
  
Martha tilted her head thoughtfully. “She’s right. Put that aside as a definite maybe.”  
  
In the end the dress that earned approval all around was a strapless number based off hollyhock. Simply pretty and not extravagant, like Rose herself, Sun Weaver declared as they stood in front of the mirror.   
  
Rose turned from side to side. The dress was pale yellow, strapless, and fell to her knees. It flared slightly just below her waist. From there the bottom of the dress was light, a thin layer of silky fabric that fluttered as she turned this way and that. It hugged her curves but didn’t cling and the color complimented the light tan she’d developed over the past month, as well as her hair.  
  
“It looks better than the blue daisy,” Martha piped up from the corner. Rose glanced at her in the mirror. “You should definitely go with that one.” She smiled then retreated behind the privacy curtain to finish changing.   
  
Rose ran her hands over her ribcage then down her skirt. She turned from side to side again, watching the bottoms swish.   
  
Sun Weaver seemed to sense that Rose had made up her mind and stepped up behind her, sliding a white sash around her waist. Apparently the sashes were something everyone wore to this and the color white meant that Rose was single. She tied it in an intricate knot at the small of her back and adjusted the train. It looked nice with the dress, but the more she thought about it, she knew the white sash would probably only cause trouble. Really, the Doctor could be a jealous sod sometimes. She hadn’t forgotten the time he’d pouted at the tabby cat because she had complimented it and not him.  
  
Would it be such a big deal if she wore purple?   
  
But Sun Weaver would have none of it. “You are not married, you wear white. Besides, I have no shades of purple left that would match and this dress looks simply stunning on you. Martha,” she called, “I can tell you are done in there.”  
  
Martha emerged from behind the curtain and smiled timidly before twirling. The dress was black with deep burgundy accents. With a smooth halter-top, it clung to her body, flaring slightly at her hips to give her room to maneuver. The front ended just above her knees and in the back continued down to her calves, ending in curled point.  
  
“Black calla lily,” Sun Weaver murmured. She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Pretty, not flashy. Come look at yourself.”  
  
Rose got out of the way so Martha could have room in front of the mirror. She watched her friend twist and spin and smile at her reflection. It was a very nice dress. Simple but elegant, the kind that would cause gazes to linger but not turn heads; would make her seem beautiful but not draw attention to herself. It fit Martha’s personality.  
  
“I like it,” Martha said.   
  
Rose frowned. It _did_ fit her personality… a little too well. Almost perfectly, really. Martha spent so much time unnoticed whether she wanted to be or not. Rose was not an idiot, she knew Martha purposefully made herself invisible or scarce all the time for her and the Doctor. She’d nearly lost her hands yesterday because she had been trying to give them space! Rose very much enjoyed time with just the Doctor, but Martha didn’t deserve to be so completely and utterly regulated to third wheel status. Well, it wasn’t happening today.   
  
Somehow Sun Weaver seemed to follow Rose’s train of thought again. “Tell me, Rose, does your friend often resign herself to plain or dark colors?”  
  
“All the time.”  
  
“I suspected as much. We’ll have to do something about it.”  
  
Martha looked between them nervously. “What?”  
  
Sun Weaver marched into the changing area and came back out with every single dress, including the ones Martha had yet to try. Rose noted that all of them were dark or muted and simple. Then the Faloran shoved Martha back in there and ordered her to hand over the dress. Rose perched on the stool and flipped through the book for ideas. Sun Weaver joined her a moment later and they quickly chose a small list of bright and vibrant flowers that they thought would look good on Martha.   
  
She flitted around her shop, pulling dresses from the wracks and folding them over her arm. Martha’s head stuck out from behind the curtain and watched apprehensively, her eyes widening at all the bright colors and intricate designs. She balked when she was presented with twenty dresses based on several types of orchids, roses, dahlias, tulips, pansies, peonies; a hydrangea, an iris, a lavender, and a marigold. But it was two to one and since Sun Weaver had also removed Martha’s regular clothes from the room, she had no choice but to try them on.   
  
The marigold and dahlias were deemed too much, the pansies and lavender too simple, the peonies too bright or pale. Martha and Rose turned their noses up at the orchids and iris. They laughed at the rose dresses and mutually vetoed them, though Sun Weaver didn’t see the problem since Rose wasn’t actually a rose. There was a blue hydrangea dress she really liked but agreed that it didn’t go well with her skin.   
  
“I really did like the calla lily dress,” she said as Sun Weaver went to look for more dresses.  
  
The Faloran woman considered her for a moment then started searching with the determination of someone after something specific. A moment later she plucked an orange gown from among the other calla lilies and carried it over. Martha accepted it with more enthusiasm than she had with the others and disappeared behind the curtain.   
  
Rose and Sun Weaver exchanged smug looks. A minute later Martha reappeared wearing the dress. It, like the other one, was simple yet elegant and hugged her upper body enticingly. Where the other dress had been black and red, this was orange and yellow. It complimented her skin tone rather nicely and would definitely cause heads to turn.   
  
She bit her lip nervously and stepped in front of the mirror. They waited quietly while she examined herself, turning from side to side and shifting her body around to test the feel.   
  
“Well?” Rose finally asked.  
  
Martha looked at her. “Isn’t it a bit much?”  
  
“Uh, remember the dahlia dresses? Those were a bit much.”  
  
“Some of the dahlia-descended agree with you,” Sun Weaver said offhandedly. “Martha, it’s not too much. The other dress matched you hair, yes, but you looked like a shadow and you would be easily lost among them. But in this you stand out and you look absolutely gorgeous. You should definitely pick this one.”   
  
Rose nodded enthusiastically.   
  
Martha pursed her lips thoughtfully and looked at herself in the mirror again. “Alright,” she decided. “This one, then.”   
  
Sun Weaver produced another white sash and tied it around Martha’s waist.   
  
Naturally, they thought shoes would be the next things to locate, but Sun Weaver just shook her head. Shoes were for the colder months only. They would be better going barefoot like everyone else. They might get people staring at their feet but they were used to being stared at on alien planets.   
  
The Doctor wasn’t back yet so she offered to help them fix their hair. She braided Rose’s hair across her head in a headband and left the rest down. Martha’s hair proved more difficult to work with and Sun Weaver was baffled by the strange texture. Martha waited patiently while she ran it through her fingers and tested the durability and strength of it. When she was done with her inspection, she twisted two small braids across the top of Martha’s head then pulled the rest into a low bun at the nape of her neck.  
  
Sun Weaver stood back to admire them both. “You look stunning. No one will be able to take their eyes off you.”  
  
Rose smiled wryly. “Not just because we’re human?”  
  
“Not just because you are human,” she agreed.   
  
From outside, the sounds of merriment were beginning to grow. They could hear the hum of voices in conversation and the fresh laughs of children. A few men passed by the door talking loudly over each other. A band had struck up a song somewhere not too far away and their festive music made Rose’s foot tap to the beat before she even realized what she was doing. Every so often there were a few loud pops nearby that sounded like something from a carnival game.   
  
Martha looked at the door thoughtfully. “Do you think we should go out or wait ‘til he gets back?”  
  
“What’s takin’ him so long, anyway?” Rose glanced at Sun Weaver. “What did he ask you?”  
  
She shook her head. “He asked me not to say.” But a smile was tugging at her lips.   
  
The Doctor finally turned up a few minutes later with a satisfied smile on his face. It quickly shifted into one of shock, and then delight when he saw them. He hugged Rose, nuzzling her cheek with his nose. “You’re beautiful,” he told her quietly before turning to Martha. “And you…wow.”  
  
Martha looked down shyly.   
  
“I mean that in a good way!” he promised quickly. “I’ve just never seen you wear anything that…bright.”   
  
“Exactly,” said Rose.   
  
Sun Weaver chuckled quietly.   
  
The Doctor smiled. “Teamed up on you, did they? Don’t worry–you look beautiful. Shall we?” he held out his arms.   
  
Rose slid her arm through his. “Are you coming out, Sun Weaver?”  
  
“In a few minutes. I have to finish putting away these dresses.”  
  
“D’you want a hand?”  
  
“No, no. Go out and enjoy Sorkora.” She smiled kindly. “It will not take me long.”  
  
“Alright. Thank you for your help.”  
  
“Yes, thank you.” Martha agreed.  
  
Sun Weaver handed over their old clothes, which the Doctor tucked into his pocket, then demanded he remove his shoes as well. At first he tried to protest, then Martha reminded him of the time he was barefoot on the moon, and Rose started listing all the other times he’d gone barefoot. So, with a sigh, he pulled off his socks and trainers, tucking them into his pocket, and then Sun Weaver bowed them out of the shop.   
  
Outside, the midday events of Sorkora were in full swing. Stalls and tables lined the streets with food to eat, trinkets to buy, and games to play set out on them. Most of the food was free, as were all of the games, but none of the trinkets. Fortunately, the Doctor had stopped at their equivalent of a bank on the way back and traded the remaining fruit for the local currency.   
  
The food stalls had a variety of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and meats for people to sample. “They eat fruits and vegetables?” Martha whispered in shock.   
  
“Why wouldn’t they?” the Doctor muttered back.   
  
“They’re plants!”  
  
“And you’re a mammal but that doesn’t stop you from eating steak.”   
  
The games were very similar to those found in carnivals around the universe. Things like knocking over bottles, tossing darts, wheel spins, plucking wooden balls with numbers carved into the bottom from a small pool. Then, of course, there were plenty they didn’t recognize. A game where you had to spin two wheels and try to get them to land on the same color, one to see who could make the longest braid in a certain amount of time, and out on the islands near the TARDIS: a tree-climbing race, island hopping, and swimming.  
  
The trinket stalls had a variety of jewelry and baubles, bits of clothing, toys, and hairpieces. They found one stall that did face and body art. Rose got an intricate swirling design painted along the side of her face in shimmering gold. Martha asked for her tattoo to be traced in the same shade of gold. When they were done, they looked at the Doctor expectantly, but he refused.   
  
There didn’t seem to be any other humans around and so they got a lot of stares, as predicted. The Falorans that wore attire similar to Martha or Rose’s beamed or smiled smugly when they saw what they were wearing, but no one could understand what the Doctor was dressed as. A tulip woman came up and asked him if he was dressed as one of the Trees. He laughed until he realized she was serious and then he explained that he wasn’t dressed as anything.  
  
Rose elbowed him after she left. “See? Shoulda dressed properly.”  
  
He looked at the Falorans around them for a moment and then shook his head. “You’ve already got me barefoot. I’m keepin’ me suit.”  
  
The next time the Doctor’s back was turned, Rose muttered in Martha’s ear. “Bet you I can get him in somethin’ festive within the hour.”  
  
Martha laughed quietly. “That’s a sucker’s bet.”  
  
The first challenge was to find something worth convincing him over. She browsed through one of the stalls selling clothes and found a shoulder sash like all the men were wearing that the vendor said was based off a rose. She grinned mischievously and forked over some money for it then went back to the Doctor with the garment hidden behind her back.  
  
The fact that she was hiding something was blatantly obvious and it got his attention immediately, just like she expected.   
  
“What have you got there?”   
  
“Secret,” she replied.  
  
The Doctor arched his eyebrows and tried to dart around her to have a look but she was expecting that and she danced neatly out of the way.  
  
She wagged a finger at him. “Ah, ah, ah. I don’t think so. You’ve been keeping a secret from me all day. I’m allowed one of my own.” He frowned, looking very much like a kicked puppy. “Besides, you wouldn’t be interested in it, anyway.”  
  
Martha made a show of looking behind Rose’s back and then shook her head. “Nah, not at all.”   
  
He eyed them suspiciously. “Alright, what are you up to?”  
  
The two women exchanged conspiratorial looks then Rose sprang forward and slung the sash over his head. “What in–?” he yelped, looking at it wildly for a moment. Then he sighed. “Rose…” But he still slipped his arm though it obediently and let her settle it around his torso. “And what was the point of putting me in this inane thing?”  
  
She smiled. “Now you look festive.”  
  
“I look silly.”  
  
“It’s supposed to be a rose…and I already paid for it,” she wheedled. “Please?” She gave him the best puppy-eyed, pleading look she could, rocking from foot to foot, and rested her chin on his shoulder. It was her greatest weapon. He’d never been able to resist before.  
  
The Doctor glanced down at it again and after a long moment he surrendered with a sigh. “Alright, I’ll wear it.”   
  
Rose beamed.  
  
As the sun sank lower in the sky, the festivities seemed to shift. The stalls began to clear away their wares and replaced with trays and bowls of food. Not the snacks from earlier, but food fit for a feast. Naturally, Rose asked the Doctor what was going on but admitted that he didn’t know all of the particulars of Sorkora. So they asked the nearest Faloran–an older lotus woman who was adjusting a platter of smoked vegetables–about it.  
  
Sorkora was divided into four parts, one for each season, starting at sunrise. First came Spring, during which time the town was decorated and set up and families ate a meal together. The trio had arrived near the end of this phase. At midday, summer began, and it was essentially a town-wide fair. Then during the late afternoon were the preparations for autumn, which began promptly at sunset, and was a large community feast and dance. Winter began near midnight and everyone slept out under the stars, snuggled together to share warmth.   
  
“And this is autumn now?” Rose asked.  
  
“Very nearly,” the lotus woman replied. “We’re almost done setting up. When you hear the music start again then you’ll know it’s time.”  
  
“Alright, thank you.”  
  
“You’re very welcome. Have a nice night.” She smiled at them then went back to her work.  
  
“One thing I still wanna know,” Martha said as they walked away. “Why’s it called Sorkora?”  
  
The Doctor waved his hand. “Oh, that’s easy. ‘ _Sor_ ’ is taken from ‘ _Soræn_ ’ which is their word for center, or middle. ‘ _Kora_ ’ means Spring. So Sorkora literally means Midspring. Of course, if they wanted to be more grammatically correct, it would be _Rene Soræn tön Kora_ , the Middle of Spring, but I guess they didn’t like the way that sounded or they didn’t want to confuse the holiday with the actual time. There’re a lot of holidays like that all over the universe. Like Blin–”  
  
“Okay, I got it.” Martha interrupted before he could start a lecture. He frowned petulantly but then he perked up as he realized there was music playing, which meant autumn had begun, and they could get food.   
  
They were given plates, sporks and knives, and cups and told to help themselves to anything at any of the tables. So they wandered from table to table like the Falorans, selecting from the many dishes they were offered. Fruits and vegetables, breads and pastries, nuts and seeds, and all varieties of meats; sauces, syrups, and dips; a plethora of juices, sweet water, plain water, and coconut milk from the tropics. They even found a table of cheeses, which were a rare delicacy since Falorans were not farmers by nature. The time travelers decided to leave the cheese for the natives and went to explore the next table over. When their plates were loaded and their cups filled, they headed for the town square, where the band was playing, and sat on the soft ground amongst the group already there listening while they ate.  
  
Rose picked a piece of meat off her plate. It was some sort of poultry, she was almost certain, and covered in a dark purple sauce. She bit into it carefully and wracked her brain to find a comparison for the meat and sauce. She finally had to ask the Doctor and he plucked a piece from his plate, biting into it and chewing thoughtfully before announcing it was some sort of duck with blackberry sauce. Some of the things she recognized on her own because they were things from her time that had been placed on Falora for preservation, like red apples (baked with cinnamon), and the smoked carrots. She ate until she felt ready to burst.   
  
“Whew, good thing we run so much,” Martha said as she set down her fork. Rose laughed.   
  
The band played quite a variety of music. At first it was cheerful, flowing, and perfect to fill the background as people chatted and ate. Then as the evening wore on, the sun sank behind the horizon, and the lanterns and torches were lit and strings of lights wrapped along the buildings, trees, and poles were turned on, the songs became louder, morphing into dance music.   
  
Those still eating moved to the side streets and the town square turned into a dance floor. Rose and Martha, of course, jumped right in. Some dances everybody went freestyle, others were line dances with their own steps and moves and Rose and Martha hung back until they felt like they got the hang of it. The other dancers were quite patient with them, too. When there was a couple’s dance, everyone with purple sashes and belts found their spouses, and those with white sashes paired off, but none of them approached either human woman.   
  
Finally, when the next couple dance came around, she marched over to the mossy log where the Doctor was sitting. He’d forgone his jacket, she noticed, but left the rose sash on, and when she got closer she realized he wasn’t alone. At least ten young Falorans were gathered around him, watching and listening raptly. She frowned, trying to figure out what he was doing with that little daisy girl’s petals, and then she laughed. The Doctor, Last of the Time Lords and the Oncoming Storm, was showing a group of half-flower children how to braid their petals.   
  
“–and as long as you don’t twist or pull too hard, they shouldn’t rip,” he was saying as he twisted three pink petals into a braid. “They’re pretty set in your head, just like your hair, but they _are_ still flower petals which, I’m sure you know, are very delicate. But you still feel fine, don’t you?”  
  
“Yep,” said the daisy girl.   
  
Rose laughed again and stepped around the log. They all looked up at her. “Hey kids. Sorry to interrupt, but I need to borrow him.”  
  
“But he’s not done with my petals!” the daisy girl protested.   
  
“I’ll bring him back.” She held out her hand. “Come on, Doctor. The world isn’t gonna end.”  
  
His brow furrowed as he tried to work out what she meant. Then he smiled and nodded. The Doctor twisted a small hair tie (and where had he gotten that?) around the braid he was working on and patted the child’s shoulder. “I’ll finish it soon,” he promised.   
  
He stood up and accepted Rose’s hand. “Do you know the moves?” he murmured into her ear.   
  
She glanced at the dancers. It was an upbeat song and partners were spinning and dancing around each other but there didn’t seem to be a pattern. “I don’t think there are any.”  
  
“Well, then.”   
  
“Is she your wife?” one of the children asked.   
  
“She’s got white,” another muttered.   
  
The Doctor smiled. “This is Rose. She’s my plus-one.”  
  
She pulled him out onto the dance floor. It was their favorite kind of dance. No rules, no chance of getting thrown out for getting it wrong, just moving in a way that felt right to the music. Laughing and smiling, hands gripping and sliding, hips bumping, and eyes only for each other.   
  
It changed to a more cheerful, fast tempo and he raised one of her arms and she spun underneath. They moved around each other in a swing, and a few of the other couples stopped to watch. By this time period, swing dancing was something of ancient history, only known by the most dedicated Earth historians. The Falorans had never even heard of it, let alone _seen_ it.   
  
When he dipped her backwards, her head fell back and she glimpsed Martha on the edge of the crowd. The Doctor pulled her back up and she leaded forward to whisper in his ear, “Martha hasn’t been asked to dance at all.”  
  
The Doctor nodded once then let go of her and she backed to the edge of the crowd. A curious murmur swept through the Falorans as the Doctor approached Martha and held out his hand. She glanced around in embarrassment and Rose saw him wink. Martha smiled in shy excitement, accepting his hand, and he whirled her onto the dance floor.   
  
Martha couldn’t swing, but a lifetime of formal events had given her some dancing knowledge. Rose couldn’t tell what it was, something similar to the swing but not quite as wild. Whatever it was, the Doctor picked up on it quickly. They didn’t have the synchrony she did with him but they did well enough considering it was one of the only times they had ever danced. She heard Martha laughing and smirked. The song ended on with a flourish on the fiddle just as Martha stopped spinning.   
  
The crowd clapped and whistled in appreciation.   
  
Martha bit her lip and looked around, cheeks flaming. The Doctor winked and said something in her ear. Her embarrassment faded and she hugged him. Letting go, she retreated to the edge of the dance floor again and the Doctor came over to Rose.   
  
“Good idea,” he said.   
  
“’s been known to happen,” she replied.  
  
The music started again, slower and calming. The Doctor smiled. “Shall we?”  
  
Rose slid her arms around his neck and he put his hands on her hips. They danced slowly in place and the Falorans, realizing the show had transitioned to something private, drifted off or started dancing themselves. The music continued, sweet and gentle, and Rose rested her head on his chest. His hearts beat in her ear, _tha-tha-thump-thump, tha-tha-thump-thump,_ and she smiled, running her hand up and down his back.   
  
“Rose?” he murmured. She raised her head. The strings of lights reflected in the Doctor’s dark eyes. “Did you have fun?”  
  
She nodded. “You sure you didn’t plan on bringing us here today?”  
  
“No, I just picked a random date in this time period. Or the TARDIS ignored that and made sure we landed today.”  
  
“Mm. My money’s on the TARDIS.”  
  
“You doubt me?”  
  
Rose shook her head. “Never.”   
  
His teasing smile faded into something more solemn and he rested his forehead against hers. “But I really did bring us here for a reason.”  
  
“So are you finally gonna tell me?”  
  
“Hmm….”  
  
“You’re such a tease.”  
  
“Oh, I know.”  
  
“Arse.”   
  
“Hey, now, if you’re going to name-call then I could always take it back.”  
  
“Take what back? Did you get me something? Is that why we’re here?”  
  
He chuckled quietly and kissed her forehead, taking her by the hand. “Come on, come over here.”   
  
He led her away from the dancers to the mossy log he’d been by earlier. The children had dispersed, though she wondered how long it would be until they came back. They had been so enthralled by his handiwork, after all, and the daisy girl had seemed adamant about getting her petals braided. But his jacket was still there, untouched.   
  
They sat down and he immediately reached into his jacket pocket. The first thing he removed was a key. Her TARDIS key–she’d left it in her skirt pocket earlier.   
  
“Easy to lose, this,” the Doctor said as he placed it in her palm. “I’m sorry your necklace broke.”  
  
“Didn’t break, exactly.”  
  
“Still.” He looked down at her hand, running his fingers across hers, tracing the dimples between the bases of her fingers. He was silent for a long time and she was resisting the urge to fidget when he spoke again. “Do you remember the day before we met Martha?”  
  
She had to think about it for a minute. “We…were in London. We visited Shareen, went to get chips, and then we saw the coil things–”  
  
“Do you remember what you told Shareen about this?” He touched the key.  
  
“I–” she frowned. “No. I don’t.”  
  
“You told her this was more important to you than anything else. No ring would ever come close.”  
  
“Oh. Yeah, I did say that, didn’t I?” she mused. “W-well it’s true, I mean, it is.”  
  
“Do you remember what happened when we were leaving?”  
  
“Yeah, that I do. Shareen yanked you down by your tie–scared you to death, too–and said something about us shaggin’ and you not abandonin’ me. Then she…” her brow furrowed as she struggled to recall distant, details that had seemed inconsequential at the time. Her eyes widened. “She whispered something to you.”  
  
He nodded. “She said she didn’t care what it was, but I’d better give you something better than a key.”  
  
Rose blinked once then swallowed, connecting the dots in her head. He hadn’t chosen this place on a whim; he had come here for something specific. But what did the flower people make that was so special?  
  
Seeing the question on her face, he pulled a box from his trouser pocket. It was large, bigger than both her hands. He opened it slowly, revealing a thin, shiny, silver necklace.   
  
“It’s got many names. _Essïnof Laso_ to the Falorans. _Nievr Bas, Cincza_ , Carola’s Gift, _Plyra Seut_ to my people, but it’s most commonly known as ‘Soul Silver.’ It’s a special material, not metallic even though it would appear to be so, it’s not even silver, but it’s got a natural bio-lock. It will only respond to the first creature that touches it.” He smiled expectantly and she just stared at him.   
  
Rose’s mind was racing. Did he–was he–no, surely he wasn’t. Was he? Better than a key, he’d said.  
  
“Are you…” she stopped, licked her lips, and tried again. “Are you asking me to marry you?”  
  
His eyes widened. “N-not exactly,” he stammered. “Not that I’ve got a problem with it or anything–I don’t–but, Rose, marriage doesn’t mean the same thing in our two cultures, and in mine it involves more than you’d expect. We’ve already promised each other forever, and consummated it, and, really, that’s good enough for me. If you want to have a proper ceremony, well, we could. But this,” he raised the box, “this was to ensure you never lose your key since it means so much to you. And no one can ever take it away from you, either. You’ll always be able to get into the TARDIS and won’t ever have to worry about not being able to come home.”   
  
She searched his eyes for a long moment. If he actually had been proposing she would not have refused, but in a way she was glad he had not. Marriage was big and they had barely even broached the topic. She had suspected there would be loads of cultural differences and they would have to be discussed. Now was neither the time nor the place for that conversation. Looking down, she studied the necklace again.  
  
“There’s no clasp. How do I put it on?”  
  
“First you have to touch it so it identifies your genetic code.”  
  
Rose set the key on her knee and reached out, fingering the necklace carefully before picking it up. Other than a little tingle in the tips of her fingers, nothing happened.  
  
“Now pinch a small area between your fingers and pull.”  
  
She did and the necklace separated like a piece of wet paper. She very nearly dropped it. “Did I break it?!”  
  
“No, no, that’s just how you take it off.” He assured her, setting the case aside. “It’s virtually indestructible. No one but you will ever be able to remove it. Not me, not your mum, no one.”  
  
Rose picked up her key and fed one end of the necklace through the hole. Then she slid the necklace around her neck and pressed the two ends together. She felt them merge and when she fingered the area she found no trace they’d ever parted. Her eyes widened in astonishment. Slipping her hand under her key, she held it up in her palm and stared at it and the necklace.  
  
“Do you–do you like it?” the Doctor asked timidly.   
  
She blinked away the tears forming in her eyes and gave him her widest smile. “I love it," she assured him, and let the key fall against her chest. “Thank you.” Then she leaned forward and kissed him full on the mouth. He returned the kiss with enthusiasm.  
  
Martha, standing about twenty yards away, smiled at them. She hadn’t been able to hear what he said but she’d certainly seen enough. So that was why he had brought them here.  
  
The Faloran standing next to her, a male a few inches taller than her with a single, red petal on his head, folded his arms. “Now, I’m not sure how things work in your culture, but that looked like a proposal to me.”  
  
She shrugged. “Well, it wouldn’t really be in my culture, but I dunno about his.” A smile slowly spread across her features. “Oh, but I hope it is!”   
  
“Well,” said the Faloran happily. “In that case…” He lifted his fingers to his mouth and let out a loud whistle before clapping his hands.   
  
Other people spotted the couple locked in a passionate embrace, started applauding and whistling as well. Martha shrugged once then joined him, letting out a loud whoop.  
  
Rose and the Doctor broke apart and Rose looked around, cheeks flaming red. She laughed and buried her face in his chest in embarrassment. The Doctor gazed around proudly, seemingly unbothered that they had been noticed. He caught Martha’s eye and she gave him a thumbs up. He smiled at her warmly before resting his head on top of Rose’s.  



	52. Detours

  
The next afternoon, Martha was waiting in the console room with a bag packed full of the souvenirs she had collected for her family. After leaving Falora, they had all gone to shower, change, and eat before their trip to London. That had been over an hour ago.  
  
She checked her watch again, chewing on the inside of her lip nervously. She had decided to tell her family the truth. Not everything, at least not right away, but they deserved to know what she had been doing with her life. And, well, she wanted them to know. She had seen so much; her outlook on life was forever changed in a way she believed to be for the better. She was no longer naïve.   
  
She knew the ugliness the universe had to offer. She had stared it in the face and she would never forget. But she had also seen the beauty and wonder of the universe as well, shining brightly against the black. She had made things just a little brighter, and she wanted them to know. She was not just a middle-child in a disharmonized family. Neither was she just a med student, a Londoner, nor even just an ordinary human anymore.   
  
She was a companion of the Doctor. She was Shakespeare’s Dark Lady. She was a hero. And she wanted the people she cared about most to know that.   
  
She was planning on telling Tish and Leo first. They would be the easiest to convince. Tish would be the easiest of them all to persuade, since she had seen firsthand the way the Doctor and Rose had handled Lazarus, and then she would be won over by Martha’s glamorous stories, and the things Martha had for her. Leo would be a little more skeptical but with proof, which would be easy enough to produce, he would find it cool. Her mum would be tough but hopefully with Leo and Tish backing her up, she would not immediately dismiss it. Or knock the Doctor’s head off.   
  
The space travelling would be the easiest part to explain. It was the _time_ travelling she was worried about. How could she explain that she had met Shakespeare just an hour after Leo’s disastrous birthday party? That she had walked through New York City’s Hooverville during the Great Depression? Visited a city thousands and thousands of years in the future where time travellers were celebrities? That days for them had been months for her? By her calculations, she had been travelling for nearly a year.  
  
She was pacing by the time the pair of them finally turned up. Martha glanced at them, but then did a double take. The Doctor was in his brown suit, and Rose was wearing a brown jacket over a light blue shirt, brown trousers, and a pair of pink converse. Her new necklace was on top of her shirt, shining brightly, TARDIS key dangling from the end. (Martha had managed to get Rose away from the Doctor for a few minutes last night and found out that, no, he had not proposed, it was just a gift.)   
  
She stared at them for a full five seconds before she realized what was nagging at her. “Oh my God, you two match. You _match_!”   
  
“Yep.” Rose jerked her head towards the Time Lord. “His idea.”  
  
He grinned unrepentantly.  
  
“You match,” she repeated, shaking her head. “Don’t you remember you’re supposed to be meeting my family today?”   
  
“We already met your family,” he pointed out.   
  
“Yeah, and you made _such_ a good impression then,” she said sarcastically.  
  
“Well….” he looked down. “I’m not gonna put that suit back on. It invites trouble. Even if I do look like James Bond.”  
  
“Tch,” Rose smiled, shaking her head.  
  
“Besides, I mean _properly_ meeting them.” Martha looked between her two friends. “I’m gonna tell them the truth.”   
  
The Doctor’s eyes widened the tiniest bit. “Oh,” he said flatly.  
  
Martha frowned. “Is there a problem?”  
  
“No–no, it’s just…” He sighed. “Your mum’s already slapped me for something that wasn’t my fault.” He made a face. “What’s she gonna do when she finds out I dragged you all across time and space?”  
  
“Now, see that’s why I’m not gonna tell her first,” Martha said, walking around the console towards them. “I’ve got a plan. I’ll tell Tish first, then Leo, and then get them to come with us as backup. I figure between the four of us, we can keep my mum from taking your head up. Shouting you deaf, though, I don’t know how we could stop that.”  
  
He sighed again. “Well, I survived Jackie Tyler. Reckon your mum can’t be worse than her.”  
  
“Oi,” Rose protested. “You deserved all of that. And besides, she really did like you. Especially after you regenerated.”  
  
“Yeah,” he agreed quietly. He shook his head quickly, perking up, and headed over to the console. He began punching in coordinates. “So, Miss Jones. Earth, London, your flat, about…four days after we left?”  
  
“Sounds alright, but, still, you match,” she protested weakly.   
  
“Well, at least this way they won’t think you’re gettin’ randy with an alien,” Rose pointed out, leaning on the console.   
  
Martha looked down at her outfit–light gray long blouse, dark gray jacket that covered her wrists (though she had makeup on underneath, just in case), black trousers, boots–and silently agreed that they looked nothing alike. She slumped against the jumpseat. “I guess. …Good job on putting that together, though.”  
  
“Hang on tight!” The Doctor flipped a switch and the TARDIS lurched beneath their feet. Martha fell back and dug her nails into the seat, holding on for dear life.  
  
Rose clung to the console as the TARDIS shuddered around them. The Doctor picked up the mallet and whacked one of the controls, then another, and pumped the bicycle pump three times. The shuddering stopped and a moment later they landed. Rose let go of the console and smoothed out her jacket then headed down the ramp, Martha just a second behind her.   
  
Rose let her do the honors of opening the door…and then froze as a wave of cool air smacked her in the face.  
  
Martha sighed heavily.  
  
“Uh, Doctor?” Rose called. “This isn’t Martha’s flat.”  
  
“It isn’t?”  
  
“It’s _Cardiff_. Again.” Martha grumbled and pulled the door shut.   
  
“Really?” He pulled the monitor around. “Oh, so it is. We’re right on top of the rift again. Could be the Old Girl just wanted some fuel. Is that it?” he murmured, patting the rotor. He stared at the monitor for another moment, chewing on his bottom lip, and then he started moving around the console, flipping switches and levers. The TARDIS made a strange rumbling sound.   
  
Rose’s stomach lurched oddly.   
  
He cocked his head to the side as he adjusted a knob. “The rift’s been active.”  
  
There was an uneasy feeling building in Rose’s gut, growing stronger and stronger with every passing second. Like butterflies dancing in her stomach…butterflies with sharp pointy edges. “Doctor,” she muttered, “I don’t feel right.”  
  
He glanced up sharply. “What do you mean?”  
  
“Something’s wrong. Here. Outside, maybe, I dunno, but it’s wrong and it’s–it’s getting closer.” Rose placed her hand over her stomach. She had not felt like this since…well since the Carrionites. It’d been bad when was distant from them but up close it had been horrible. But was she was feeling now was even worse than that, and she was not even standing next to the source. Whatever it was, she somehow knew it shouldn’t exist.  
  
He frowned and started flipping the switches back. “Right. We’re getting out of here.” He paused in front of the monitor, and Rose saw pure panic flip across his face for a split second, and then he flipped the dematerialization switch. The rotor wheezed as it began bobbing up and down. The Doctor grinned.   
  
Something slammed into the TARDIS, and the console sparked as the ship bucked wildly. The ship screamed in Rose’s mind, a cry of fear, outrage, and pain. Rose let out a similar cry, her hands flying to her head. She hit the floor along with the Doctor and Martha, but she did not get back up. The console continued to spark and fizz as the ship shuddered and jolted violently.   
  
“What’s that?!” she heard Martha shout.  
  
“We’re accelerating…into the future,” the Doctor replied. “The year five billion. Five trillion. …Fifty trillion. What?”   
  
Rose raised her head. The TARDIS was still howling in her mind, protesting against something that had crashed into her.   
  
“The year 100 trillion. That's impossible!”  
  
“Why? What happens then?” Martha asked fearfully.  
  
The Doctor did not answer, his mouth opening and closing in disbelief as he stared at the console. “W-we’re going to the end of the universe.”  
  
He looked down at Rose, seeming to notice she was down there for the first time. “Rose,” he murmured, pulling her into a sitting position. “Rose, what is it?”  
  
She shook her head, unable to articulate what she was feeling. She allowed him to pull her off the floor, and tried unsuccessfully to ignore the churning in her stomach. She fixed her fingers around the edge of the console and tried to hold on. He kept his arm around her to prevent her from falling again.  
  
The TARDIS landed with a heavy thud that jostled them, but they managed to stay on their feet. The three of them looked at each other unsurely. Rose dug her fingers into the Doctor’s jacket.   
  
“Well, we’ve landed,” he said quietly.   
  
“End of the universe, yeah?” Rose glanced up. “What’s out there?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
Martha let out a tiny laugh. “Say that again. That’s rare.”  
  
“Not even the Time Lords came this far,” he explained and her smile faded. “We should leave. We should go. We should really, really…go.” He looked between the two of them for a moment. Rose pursed her lips, the corners twitching upward.   
  
The Doctor grinned widely and ran for the door with Rose, grabbing his coat from the strut. Martha set down her bag on the jumpseat before following them.  
  
Outside was dark and bleak. The sky was almost completely empty, only tiny pricks of light visible here and there within the vast expanse of black. The planet was old and barren, nothing but scraggly bushes, grass and lots of rock, like an old disused quarry.   
  
The wind blew frigid air around them and Rose shivered. Whatever had been causing the TARDIS to feel funny did not seem to be there anymore. Must have fallen off at some point in the vortex or–  
  
“Oh my God!” Martha shouted in alarm.  
  
There was a body lying on the ground. Martha raced over to it, but Rose and the Doctor hung back. Her stomach wrenched once more and she glanced up at the Doctor and saw that his teeth were clenched. He started to walk towards it but she dug her feet into the ground. For some reason, and she was not quite sure why. Some instinct of hers was warning her to stay away. The Doctor glanced at her and urged her forward.   
  
“Can’t get a pulse,” Martha was saying. “Oh, hold on–you’ve got that medical kit thing!” She ran back into the TARDIS.  
  
Rose forced herself to look at the body properly. Trousers and suspenders, boots and a shirt, and over it all a dark World War II coat–  
  
“Oh my God!” she gasped, hand flying over her mouth. It was Jack Harkness!   
  
“Hello again,” the Doctor said quietly. “Oh, I’m sorry.”  
  
“B-but–how–he–” she struggled to find the words and _why_ did the Doctor act like he knew what was going on. “What’s wrong with him?”  
  
“Here we go!” Martha came running back out of the TARDIS with the medical kit, and shoved them both out of the way. “It’s a bit odd, though. Not very 100 trillion–that coat’s more like World War II.” She said, pulling out the stethoscope.  
  
“I think he came with us,” the Doctor said.  
  
“How do you mean? From Earth?” asked Martha.  
  
“Must have been clinging to the outside of the TARDIS.” He glanced back at the ship. “All the way through the Vortex. _Well_ , that’s very him.”   
  
Martha removed the stethoscope from her ears. “What? Do you know him?” she demanded, looking between his frown and Rose’s shocked expression.  
  
“Yeah.” Rose nodded to the body. “That’s Captain Jack.”  
  
It took a second for Martha to place the name and then her eyes widened. “Jack Harkness? B-but, I thought he–” she looked down at him again. “I’m sorry, there’s no heart beat. There’s nothing. He’s dead.”  
  
It was like Jack been waiting for her to say that. A strange surge of power was the only warning they had before he literally jerked back to life with a wild, desperate gasp. Eyes flying open, he grabbed onto Martha who screamed in terror. Rose recoiled, letting out a screech, and ducked behind the Doctor. He didn’t even flinch.   
  
“Oh, well, so much for me!” Martha yelled. “It’s alright. Just breathe deep. I’ve got you now.”  
  
Rose peeked out from behind the Doctor. Jack was in Martha’s arms, still breathing heavily, but it did not stop him from grinning saucily at her.   
  
“Captain Jack Harkness. And who are you?” He brushed his thumb across her chin.  
  
That was Jack all right. At the end of the universe. Why was he here? How was he here? And why did the very sight of him make Rose want to throw up? Why did the thought of being near him make her want to run as far and fast as she could? _He shouldn’t exist_ , some strange instinct hissed. _Get away. Wrong, wrong, wrong_.   
  
“Martha Jones,” Martha said with a breathy laugh.  
  
“Nice to meet you, Martha Jones.”  
  
“Oh, don’t start!” the Doctor barked.  
  
Jack looked annoyed. “I was only saying hello.”  
  
Martha grinned. “I don’t mind.” She helped him to his feet and he grunted in pain.   
  
Rose swiveled her shocked gaze to the Doctor. He glanced down, cautioning her with his eyes. She nodded once, taking a deep breath, and tried to work past the sick feeling in her gut. It was Jack, after all. Whatever was wrong it could not have been his fault. He would not have purposefully made himself…like that. All impossible and wrong and, God, it almost hurt to look at him.   
  
Jack dusted off his coat and observed the two of them. “Hello, Rosie,” he said with a smile.   
  
Somehow she managed to return the smile and step out from behind the Doctor.  
  
“Hello, Jack,” Rose said. “Long time.”  
  
“Long time,” he agreed. His eyes lingered on Rose for a long moment and she thought she saw a flash of sadness in his eyes before he turned to the Doctor. They stared each other down coldly. “Doctor.”  
  
“Captain.”   
  
“Good to see you.”  
  
“And you. Same as ever…although…” The Doctor squinted. “Have you had work done?”  
  
Jack’s expression shifted. “You can talk!”  
  
The Doctor’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Oh yes, the face. Regeneration. How did you know it was me?”  
  
“I’ve seen pictures,” Jack said dismissively. “I’ve been following you for a long time.” His voice hardened. “You abandoned me.”  
  
“Did I?” he asked too innocently. “Busy life. Moving on.”  
  
Rose looked up sharply. “What?”  
  
The Doctor winced.  
  
“I thought you said he was helping the people after the Gamestation. You told me he’d _chose_ to stay behind!” her voice shot up an octave. “How could you just leave him there?! Why?!”  
  
He frowned at her for a moment, glancing at Jack briefly. “I think you know why.”  
  
Rose took a single step away from them both. She was beyond furious at the Doctor for abandoning Jack in the middle of the aftermath of a Dalek invasion. Though she had a feeling that she knew exactly what he was talking about. Jack was not _right_. He just wasn’t. She was surprised Martha was able to stand so close to him. Then again, Martha wasn’t sensitive to things like she and the Doctor were.   
  
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?” he demanded.  
  
The Doctor scowled and said nothing, beginning another cold stare down between the two men. The air was thick with tension and Rose was just about to step in between them when the Doctor turned and walked away, heading out into the barren terrain. The three of them stared after him for a moment. Martha nudged Rose and gave her a confused look. Rose just shook her head.  
  
“Are you lot coming?” the Doctor called back. “End of the universe!”  
  
Rose sighed and started after him. Martha and Jack followed. It was easier being near him when she was not looking at him. She wracked her brain to figure out what exactly could have happened to Jack to make him like this. The Doctor had not had a problem with Jack during their travels, and neither had she, but then, she had been a normal human back then. Whatever had caused Jack to be like this had happened at the Gamestation.  
  
“So what do you mean abandoned?” Martha asked Jack.  
  
“Exactly that,” Jack said. “There I was, stranded in the year 200,100, ankle-deep in Dalek dust, and he goes off without me. But I had this!”   
  
She heard him tap something.   
  
“I used to be a Time Agent. It’s called a vortex manipulator. He’s not the only one who can time travel.”  
  
“Oh, excuse me.” The Doctor jabbed a finger at the vortex manipulator on Jack’s wrist. “ _That_ is not time travel. It’s like I’ve got a sports car and you’ve got a space hopper.”  
  
“Oh, give it a rest,” Rose groaned. Yet at the same time, she was relieved. It was an old argument between them. At least their camaraderie was still there.  
  
Martha laughed. “Boys and their toys!”  
  
“Alright, so I bounced.” Jack snapped. He was nearly beside them now, and Rose shuddered at the proximity. “I thought _‘21st century, best place to find the Doctor’_ except that I got it a little wrong. I arrived in 1869 and this thing burnt out so it was useless.”  
  
“Told you,” the Doctor muttered.   
  
“I had to live through the entire twentieth century waiting for a version of you that would coincide with me!”   
  
“But that makes you more than a hundred years old.” Martha pointed out.   
  
“And lookin’ good, don’t you think?” He chuckled. “So I went to the time rift, based myself around the thing ‘cause I knew you’d come back to refuel. Then my handy Doctor detectors told me you were coming, and here we are.”  
  
“I still wanna know why you left him behind,” Rose muttered.   
  
“I was a bit busy, you know. Saving you then regenerating and all.”   
  
“Is that what normally happens, though? Seriously?” Martha demanded. “Do you just get bored with us one day and disappear?”  
  
“Not if you’re blonde,” Jack teased.  
  
“Oi!” Rose protested, looking over her shoulder.   
  
Jack grinned and winked.   
  
Rose fixed her eyes on a point just over his shoulder, and found looking at him using her peripheral vision was easier.  
  
“Oh, that’s enough!” The Doctor spun around. “We’re at the end of the universe, alright? We’re at the edge of knowledge itself and you’re busy…blogging!” he looked between them in disbelief.   
  
Rose frowned.   
  
“Come on!” The Doctor stalked past them towards the edge of the cliff they had been walking alongside. His stride slowed and he stuffed his hands into his pocket.   
  
Rose followed curiously and inhaled slowly when she saw the sight below them.   
  
Caves and stairs, bridges stretching across, doors and windows, flat platforms and bumpy ledges. An entire city had been carved out of the cliffs. It was breathtaking and hauntingly beautiful. It was completely empty, save for a soft glow that emitted from the rocks themselves.   
  
Martha gasped in awe. “Is that a city?”  
  
“A city or a hive,” the Doctor murmured. “Or a nest. Or a conglomeration. Looks like it was grown. But look there.” He traced the line of one of the bridges with his finger. “That’s like pathways…roads. Must have been some sort of life.” He inhaled through his teeth and on the exhale, “Long ago.”  
  
“What happened?” Rose whispered.   
  
“Time,” the Doctor said. “Just time. Everything’s dying now. All the great civilizations have gone.” He looked up, pointing at the black sky. “This isn’t just night. All the stars have burned up and faded away into nothing.”   
  
Rose shivered and not from the chill. “Then why aren’t we dead? Should be frozen, like Women Wept.”  
  
“It must have an atmospheric shell,” Jack replied and looked down at her. “Or, you’re right, it would be. And we’d be dead.”  
  
“Well, the three of us, maybe.” The Doctor lowered his eyes from the sky. “Not so sure about you, Jack.”  
  
Jack stared.   
  
“What about the people?” Martha asked. “Does no one survive?”  
  
The Doctor cocked his head to one side. “I suppose we have to hope. Life will find a way.”  
  
Movement in her peripheral vision caught Rose’s attention. Running on the uppermost level of the city below them was a…well he looked human.  
  
“Well, he’s not doing too bad,” Jack said, pointing at the man.  
  
The man was not just running. Rose recognized franticness in his stride, in the way he kept looking over his shoulder. He was running for his life from the mob of roaring and shouting humanoids with torches and weapons.   
  
“Is it me, or does that look like a hunt?” The Doctor grabbed her hand. “Come on!”   
  
They sprinted along the edge of the cliff until they found a roadway leading down into the city below. Leaning back to avoid pitching forward, they scrambled and skidded down the steep road onto more flat ground, and then tore off again.   
  
Jack laughed gleefully from the back of the group. “Oh, I’ve missed this!”  
  
Rose knew what he meant. The thrill of the adrenaline rush buzzing through their bodies, the way their hearts pounded, and the cool air zipping through their lungs as they raced to help the poor man. What good they could do against a horde of hunters she was not quite sure, but they had to at least try.  
  
It was Jack that caught the man in his arms. “I’ve got you!”  
  
“We’ve gotta run!” the man panted. “They’re coming! They’re coming!”  
  
Jack gently shoved the man over to the Doctor then pulled a gun from his belt, aiming it at the humanoid hunters.   
  
“Jack, no!” Rose cried.  
  
“Don’t you dare!” the Doctor echoed.   
  
Jack looked at them for a moment, his teeth clenched, and then raised the gun over his head and fired three shots.   
  
Rose slammed her hands over her ears.   
  
The hunters–vicious things with wild hair, war paint, ragged clothes, crude weapons, and sharp, shark-like teeth–slowed a few yards away from them. They hissed and snarled menacingly, shifting their weight rapidly, dropping into crouches, pacing wildly, but none of them advanced further, which meant they knew what guns were.   
  
“What the hell are they?” Martha asked, lowering her hands from her ears.  
  
“There’s more of them!” the man gasped, looking the Doctor dead in the eye. “We’ve got to keep going!”  
  
“I’ve got a ship nearby. It’s safe,” the Doctor promised. “It’s not far, it’s just over there.”  
  
Yet even as they said that, more of the hunter creatures were streaming down the rise, torches and weapons held aloft. The group down on the level with them began hissing and snarling with new fervor at the sight of their reinforcements.  
  
Rose swore quietly. “Doctor…”  
  
“We’re close to the silo!” The man blurted suddenly. “If we get to the silo, then we’re safe!”  
  
The Doctor looked at his three companions. “Silo?”  
  
“Silo.”  
  
“Silo’s good.”  
  
“Silo for me!”  
  
They tore off with the man in the lead. For someone that had been running for God-knows-how-long, he sure recovered quickly. Only Martha had trouble keeping up. Not anticipating anything but seeing her family today, she had worn heeled boots, and now she struggled with them on the rocky, uneven terrain. Behind them, the hunters were snarling and bellowing as they gave chase.  
  
Then the wild ground gave way to a smooth dirt road. They saw scraps of metal piled up and jutting out from the rock, and then looming ahead, a group of towers and a large mountain, surrounded by a large metal fence.   
  
A bright light hit them from above, tracking their progress, and Rose had to squint to see where she was going.   
  
“It’s the Futurekind!” the man bellowed to the humans on the other side of the fence. “Open the gate!”  
  
There was a commotion on the other side, and one of the guards ran up to the gate with a torch. He shouted something Rose could not make out over the snarling of the Futurekind.   
  
He shouted again, “Show me your teeth! Show me your teeth!”   
  
They reached the fence and the man shined the light at their faces.  
  
“Show him your teeth!” the man they’d rescued ordered.   
  
The four time travelers glanced at each other in confusion, and then bared their teeth at the man.   
  
Martha whimpered in fear.   
  
“Human!” shouted the guard. “Let ‘em in! Let ‘em in!”  
  
The other guards pulled on the chain binding the fence and opened the gate wide enough for the five of them to slip through. They just barely managed to get the gate closed before the Futurekind were there. Lost in the haze of their hunting frenzy, they did not appear to be slowing, so one of the guards pulled out his gun and fired several rapid shots at the ground in front of the Futurekind.   
  
Rose recoiled from the shots and the Doctor threw one arm around her, pulling her close to him protectively. She could feel his hearts beating wildly against her back.  
  
The leader of the Futurekind skidded and hopped to avoid getting shot, and behind him the others slowed. The firing stopped. They growled quietly, their painted faces twisted, but they did not advance. The leader paced back and forth in agitation, his eyes never leaving the people behind the gate. The guard lowered his gun just slightly.  
  
“Humans,” the leader of the hunters said in a guttural voice. “Human-y.” He patted his chest, smiling nastily. “Make feast.”  
  
“Go back to where you came from.” The guard with the gun ordered. He raised the gun when the Futurekind made no move to do so. “I said go back! Go back!” He took aim.  
  
“Oh, don’t tell him to put down his gun,” Jack muttered scathingly.  
  
“He’s not my responsibility,” the Doctor replied.  
  
“And I am?” he laughed humorlessly. “That makes a change.”  
  
The leader glared for a moment. Behind him, the others shifted back and forth tensely, and some of them snarled. “Kind watch you,” he warned them gleefully. “Kind hungry.”  
  
The two groups stared each other down for another tense second.  
  
The leader of the Futurekind made a slashing motion with his arm and uttered a single, sharp sound. His hunters began to back away, their eyes never leaving the humans, hissing and growling, until they were out of firing range. The leader gave them one last venomous look before they took off running back into the rocky wastelands. The guards lowered their weapons and breathed easier.   
  
The Doctor’s arm contracted around Rose for a moment then he released her. She turned away from the gate and as she did, her eyes briefly locked with Jack’s. Another tremor rippled through her. Jack gave her a steady look, then reached up and tapped below his eye with one finger. It was the same subtle action Martha and the Doctor used to tell Rose that her eyes had gone funny. He showed no surprise at seeing golden irises, no hesitation.   
  
Rose was stunned.  
  
She realized that Martha, the Doctor, and the man were heading towards the compound with the guard. Jack inclined his head after them and she nodded once.  
  
“My name is Padra Fet Shafe Cane,” the man was saying when they caught up. “Tell me. Please tell me, can you take me to Utopia?  
  
The guard smiled. “Oh yes, sir! Yes I can!”


	53. The Silo

  
  
The silo turned out to be a compound built into the mountain itself. Outside it looked like normal rock and dirt, but underneath was a labyrinth of metal and cement tunnels. It was only slightly warmer inside the silo than it was outside.   
  
The four travelers and the refugee man were delivered to a man with dark skin called Lieutenant Atillo near the entrance of the silo for registration. He took down their names, and assumed from appearances, that they were all human–no one bothered to correct him. Not that his definition of human would quite match the time travelers’ anyway. The Doctor’s name, however, he wouldn’t accept.  
  
“Doctor’s a title, not a name.”  
  
“Well, it’s my name and I am a doctor,” the Doctor said haughtily.   
  
“Of medicine?”   
  
“Well…of everything, really.”  
  
Atillo gave him a funny look, told them to wait, then walked over to one of the other men. He leaned close and spoke quickly and quietly for a few moments.  
  
As the seconds ticked by, Rose noticed it was getting easier to stand next to Jack. No one but the Doctor and she seemed to realize there was anything off about him. The Doctor had a number of senses that humans did not. That was probably why he could tell, but the only thing she had that others did not was her connection to the TARDIS. Whether it was Jack’s distance from her, or just her body building its own resistance to this…problem, however, was difficult to say.  
  
Atillo returned, smiling, and handed them each a small metallic strip. “These are your identification cards. You must keep them with you at all times as they’ll be required for getting your meal rations and hygiene time slots.”  
  
Rose held hers up for a look. _Rose Tyler_ was etched into the smooth surface above a small line of symbols that didn’t translate.  
  
“Head down the hall to your left, and you’ll enter the passenger areas. We have limited bunk space so we’re on a rotating schedule for the beds so everyone has an opportunity. You’ll be added to the list for that but I’m afraid you’ll have to be near the bottom. So in the meantime, I suggest you find a nice spot in the halls. You might be able to find a corner, if you’re lucky. Increased meal rations, hygiene time, and supplies will be allotted to those who sign up to work. That’s everything, I think.”  
  
“Uh, hang on a tick. I’ve got a problem. Something very valuable of mine is still out there.” The Doctor jerked his head towards the tunnel they’d come down. “I’m gonna need it back.”  
  
“Yes, and please, can you tell me if my family made it?” Padra pleaded.   
  
“It’s a box, a big blue box. I’m sorry, but I really need it back. It’s stuck out there,” interrupted the Doctor.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Padra insisted, “but my family were heading for the silo. Did they get here? My mother is Kistane Shafe Cane. My brother is Bilto.”  
  
Atillo held up his hand calmingly. “The computers are down but you can check the paperwork. Creet!” he called.  
  
A tiny boy with a headful of wavy blonde hair poked out from behind a piece of machinery.   
  
“Passenger needs help.”  
  
“Right,” said the boy. He pulled out a clipboard that was about a third of his size. “What do you need?”  
  
Padra lunged down to the boy’s level and seized the clipboard.   
  
“A blue box, you said?” Atillo asked the Doctor.  
  
The Doctor nodded. “Big, tall, wooden. Says ‘Police.’”  
  
He considered him for a moment. “We’re driving out for the last water collection. I’ll see what I can do.”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“Yes, thank you,” Rose agreed empathetically.   
  
The Lieutenant’s eyes flicked between them, he nodded once, and then walked away. Rose and the Doctor glanced at each other, and she saw the same tension she was feeling reflected in his shoulders and the hard set of his mouth.   
  
Creet led Padra away, and Martha followed after him. “Sorry, but how old are you?”  
  
He glanced back. “Old enough to work. This way.”  
  
Not seeing anything else to do, the others followed after. Creet lead them down into a wide series of hallways. They were filled to the brim with people in everything from rags to dilapidated remains of once fine clothing. They were all dressed for warmth. Every single original human ethnicity and every single variation of was there: dark skins, light skins, and skins every shade in between; blue eyes, green eyes, brown, hazel, yellowish, gray, black red, purple, and there was even one guy with bright orange. They all regarded the newcomers with the same uninterested curiosity–recognizing new faces as well as their mutual plight, but not caring beyond that. Just a handful of more lost souls seeking salvation.  
  
Creet and Padra continued to call out the names of his family. The people around them either did not respond, or simply shook their heads.   
  
“It’s like a refugee camp,” Martha murmured.  
  
“It’s _stinking_!” Jack said. “Ooh, sorry. No offense,” he said to the large man who was scowling at him.   
  
The Doctor, even with his superior Time Lord senses, did not seem too bothered by the stench at all. In fact, he seemed rather happy about it. “Don’t you see, though? The ripe old smell of humans. You survived!” He chirped and slung his arm around Rose’s shoulders. “Oh, much better than a million years evolving into clouds of gas. And then another million as downloads. But you always revert to the same basic shape. The fundamental humans.”  
  
Ahead of them, Creet and Padra continued to search for his family.  
  
The Doctor’s arm tightened around her shoulders. “End of the universe and here you are. Indomitable! That’s the word!” He smiled at Rose but she didn’t miss the bit of pain in his eyes. He let go of her and walked ahead of them towards Padra. “Indomitable! Ha!”  
  
“Is there a Kistane Shafe Cane!” Creet called once again.  
  
From the end of the hallway, a woman in tattered clothes rose to her feet. “That’s me,” she said and then she gasped. “Oh my God.”  
  
“Mother?” Padra murmured. He abandoned Creet, and ran towards his family. The little boy scurried after him. “Bilto?!” exclaimed Padra.  
  
Padra raced into his mother’s waiting arms and, weeping with joy, and pressed her face against his shoulder. His older brother Bilto came up behind them and put his arms around them both.   
  
Rose smiled and Martha made a happy little series of bounces. “It’s not all bad news!”   
  
Both women watched the reunited family for a moment, each of them feeling the familiar pang of longing for their own families. Rose longed for her mum, Mickey, Pete, and the little brother or sister she would never meet. Martha thought of her parents and siblings and she wished they had not detoured to Cardiff. She had really wanted to see them today, but she knew they were only a TARDIS ride away. Rose’s were on the other side of an unbreakable wall.  
  
Rose looked away in time to see Jack approach a man with quite a handsome face. Jack stuck out his hand. “Captain Jack Harkness.” he greeted. “And who are you?”   
  
The man smiled and shook his hand.  
  
“Stop it!” The Doctor barked without looking away from the panel he was attempting to sonic open. “Give us a hand with this.”  
  
Jack turned, mouth open in protest, and then looked at Rose for help. She grinned at him, tongue between her teeth, and raised her eyebrows. He gave the man an apologetic look, tapped his hand, and then went to help the Doctor. Rose and Martha followed.  
  
“It’s half deadlocked,” the Doctor reported, stepping away from the panel. “See if you can overwrite the code.”  
  
Jack nodded curtly and set to work on the keypad.   
  
The Doctor ran the sonic across the side and top of the door. “Let’s see where we are.”  
  
The door slid open and he took a step forward into empty space. He yelped and his arm shot out, grabbing onto the door, and he swung himself around. Rose shrieked once in alarm, lunging forward, but Jack beat her to it. He grabbed the Doctor by his coat sleeves and hauled him back onto solid ground.  
  
Rose exhaled loudly “Are you alright?”  
  
“’m fine. Don’t worry. Thanks, Jack,” the Doctor said.   
  
“How did you cope without me?” Jack muttered.   
  
Martha gasped in awe. “Now _that_ …is what I call a rocket.”  
  
The room before them was enormous, easily half a mile from top to bottom, illuminated by rings of lights placed intermittently along the wall. Gangplanks and catwalks ran along the walls and across the room. In the center, stretching from the top to as far down as they could see, was a massive rocket. It was not like any of the many advanced spaceships Rose had seen in her travels, or even like the rudimentary ones of her time. It wasn’t sleek or pretty, just a hulking mass of machinery covered by dull metal plating.  
  
But what good would a rocket do?   
  
“They’re not refugees,” the Doctor murmured. “They’re passengers.”  
  
Martha looked over sharply. “He said they were going to Utopia.”   
  
“I don’t understand. What’s Utopia?” Rose asked.   
  
“It’s an idea from long ago,” the Doctor explained. “From even before your time. A utopia is basically an Eden. The ideal society. No hunger, wars, or disease. No corruption or wickedness. The perfect place. 100 trillion years and it’s the same old dream.” To Jack, “Do you recognize those engines?”   
  
“Nope,” the other man said. “Whatever it is, it’s not rocket science. What about you, Rose? Ever seen anything like it?”  
  
Rose blinked in surprise. She knew next to nothing about spaceships. “I dunno. ‘S hot though.”  
  
“Boiling,” the Doctor agreed. They took one last look around then stepped back. Jack used the keypad to reseal the door. “But if the universe is falling apart, where do they expect to find a utopia?”  
  
An elderly man with white hair, wearing dark trousers, a smart dark vest, and a white shirt with long, voluminous sleeves, came jogging up to them, breathing heavily. He looked between the two men and settled on Jack. “The Doctor?”  
  
“That’s me,” the Time Lord said as Jack pointed.   
  
“Oh, good!” The man grabbed his hand. “Good!” He jumped once in glee then started pulling the Doctor down the hall. “Good. Good,” he repeated over and over. “Good, good, good, good, good!”  
  
The Doctor looked back at his companions. “It’s good apparently!”   
  
The man led them into a long flight of stairs and headed down. “I’m so glad you’ve come! We’ve been working for so long–months and months non-stop! There’s only so much I can do–but now you’re here–a _scientist_ –we may just make it!”  
  
“Who are you?” Rose asked. “Where are you taking us?  
  
“I’m Professor Frey Yana! I’m taking you down to my lab!” He called over his shoulder. “Hurry, hurry!”  
  
The professor led them down no less than a dozen flights of stairs, deeper and deeper into the silo. The further down they went, the closer they got to the engines, and to the planet’ s core, the warmer it got. The stench of hundreds of unwashed bodies faded away, replaced by the smell of well-used machinery, gas, and grease. The air tasted very stale and dry, similar to recycled air on a ship in deep space.   
  
He pressed a button on the wall and a large metal door slid open, revealing a huge room filled with an assortment of machines and equipment. Wires, pipes, tools, and bits of things Rose could not name were strewn every which way. A blue-green humanoid that looked very much like an insect stood in the door wearing a lab coat.   
  
“Chan–welcome–tho!” said the insectoid.  
  
The professor pulled the Doctor right down into the thick of things, and started gesturing and talking at a mile a minute.   
  
“Chan–welcome–tho!” the female greeted again with a small bow.  
  
“Hi,” Rose replied with a smile.  
  
“Hello,” Martha said. “Who are you?”  
  
“Chan–Chantho–tho,” answered the woman.   
  
“Chanchanthotho?” Rose repeated slowly, nose scrunching up.  
  
“Chan–no, just Chantho–tho.”   
  
Rose ran that through her mind again. “Chantho?”  
  
“Cha–yes–tho.”   
  
Jack grinned saucily and held out his hand. “Captain Jack Harkness.”  
  
“Stop it!” the Doctor barked, glancing up.  
  
Jack rolled his eyes. “Can’t I say hello to anyone?”   
  
“Chan–I do not protest–tho!” The woman grinned broadly, as affected by his charm as everyone else.  
  
“Maybe later, Blue.” He winked.   
  
Chantho exhaled quickly, her mouth forming an ‘o’ and she grinned once again, flustered.  
  
“Oh, stop.” Rose elbowed him  
  
“You’re as bad as him,” Jack protested.   
  
“You’ve gone and flustered the poor thing,” accused Rose.  
  
Jack winked again, and then clapped his hands together. “So, what have we got here?”   
  
He headed for a small area in the corner filled with chairs to set down his pack. Martha made a curious expression and followed him. Rose cast her eyes around the room once, taking in all the machines, and decided she would not be of any help at the moment, so she followed Martha over to the little homey corner. Her friend was frowning down at Jack’s backpack with her arms folded.  
  
“What is it?” Rose asked.  
  
Martha licked her lips. “Don’t you hear it?”  
  
Rose cocked her head to one side, listening. Above the hum of the machinery and the air blowing through the vent above them, there was only one sound that stood out: a bubbling noise, like the bubbles when you blow air through a straw into liquid… and the sound was coming from Jack’s pack.  
  
“Yeah, I hear it,” Rose replied.  
  
Martha bit her lip then, shrugging, crouched down to unzip it. Inside was a large container with a handle on top. Martha gripped it and lifted it out of the bag. The container was filled with clear liquid, and in the center was something pale and fleshy with five distinct appendages–  
  
Rose gasped out loud. “What the hell?!” At the same time Martha said, “Oh my God!”   
  
Everyone came rushing over to see what the commotion was as she set it down on the table. “You’ve got a hand!” exclaimed Martha.  
  
Rose tore her eyes away from the hand to look at Jack. He looked very much like a kid caught with something he shouldn’t have.   
  
“A hand in a jar!” Martha continued, gesturing to it. The Doctor sat down in one of the chairs, glasses on, and peered at the jar. “A hand in a jar in your bag!”  
  
“But that’s–that’s my hand!” the Doctor sputtered.  
  
“What the hell?” Rose repeated.  
  
Jack leaned against the wall. “I said I had a couple of Doctor detectors.”   
  
“Chan–is this a tradition amongst your people–tho?” the alien woman asked nervously.   
  
“Not on my street!” Martha exclaimed and put her hands on her hips. “What d’you mean that’s your hand? You’ve got both your hands–I can see them.”  
  
“Remember when those aliens came on Christmas Day a few years back? Lost my hand in a swordfight with the Sycorax leader.”  
  
“Oh,” Rose breathed, remembering. That had been a terrifying minute. Seeing the sword come down and sever his hand, that brief time of utter fear, sure he was about to die any second. Then he had grown another hand, like it was nothing.  
  
“What?” Martha laughed sarcastically. “And you grew another hand?”  
  
“Um, yeah. Yeah I did. Yeah,” he said matter-of-factly.   
  
Her mocking smile faded into a disbelieving scowl.   
  
“Hello!” The Doctor wiggled the fingers of his second hand at Martha.  
  
The professor took a step forward. “Might I ask, what species _are_ you?”  
  
The Doctor took a deep breath and straightened up like he was preparing for the response he was sure to get. “Time Lord. Last of.”   
  
Both natives stared uncomprehendingly.   
  
“Heard of them? Legend or anything?” he asked, expectantly.  
  
They shook their heads.  
  
“Blimey, end of the universe is a bit humbling.” He frowned petulantly. Rose chuckled quietly and patted his shoulder.   
  
“Chan–it is said that I am the last of my species too–tho.”  
  
“Sorry, what was your name?” asked the Doctor.  
  
“My assistant and good friend, Chantho,” the professor answered. “A survivor of the Malmooth. This was their planet, Malcassairo, before we took refuge.”  
  
“The city outside–that was yours?”  
  
She nodded. “Chan–the conglomeration died–tho.”  
  
“Conglomeration!” the Doctor crowed, throwing his hand up as he leaned back in the chair. “That’s what I said.”  
  
Rose kicked him in the leg. “Doctor!” she hissed.  
  
“What?”  
  
“You’re supposed to say sorry,” Jack stage-whispered.   
  
“Oh, yes.” He leaned forward and gave the Malmooth woman a serious look. “Sorry.”   
  
Chantho ducked her head. “Chan–most grateful–tho.”  
  
Martha, it appeared, had not been paying attention to anything said in the last few minutes. She was still caught on one thing. “You grew…another hand?”  
  
The Doctor wiggled his fingers. “Hello again!”   
  
She gave him an annoyed look.   
  
He smiled and stood up. “It’s fine. Look, really, it’s me.” He held out his hand and wiggled his fingers one last time.   
  
She accepted his hand and shook it slowly, then laughed nervously. “All this time and you’re still full of surprises!”  
  
He grinned broadly, clicked his tongue, and winked.   
  
“Cha–you are most unusual–tho!” Chantho giggled.  
  
“Oh, you’ve got no-o-o idea,” Rose told with her a laugh.   
  
Jack had apparently had enough distractions and decided to get them back on a more important subject. “So what about those things outside? The Beastie Boys. What are they?”  
  
“We call them the Futurekind,” the professor explained. “Which is a myth in itself, but, uh, it is feared they are what we will become. Unless we reach Utopia.”  
  
“And what’s Utopia?” Rose asked.   
  
“Oh, every human knows of Utopia. Where have you been?” asked the professor.  
  
“Um…”  
  
“We’re sort of…hermits,” the Doctor said. It wasn’t exactly a lie, either.  
  
The professor was baffled. “Hermits with, uh, friends?”  
  
“Hermits United. We meet up every ten years. Swap stories about caves. It’s good fun…for a hermit. So, um, Utopia?”   
  
The professor arched his eyebrows, not believing a word of it. But when the Doctor mentioned Utopia, his mouth twisted into something resembling a grin and he crooked his finger. He led the group over to one of the terminal screens. On the screen was some sort of map labeled Gravitational Field Navigation System, made with rippling and morphing areas surrounded by green. In the top right corner was a blinking, red light. Other windows showed various coordinates and calculations.  
  
The Doctor studied them intently as the professor explained. “The call came from across the stars over and over again. Come to Utopia. Originated from that point.” He pointed.  
  
“Where is that?” the Doctor asked.  
  
“Oh, it’s far beyond the Condensate Wilderness. Out towards the wild lands and the dark matter reefs. Calling us in. The last of the humans scattered across the night.”  
  
A small shiver rushed from the crown of Rose’s head to the tip of her spine. The way he described what was left, the darkness in his voice–the universe really _was_ ending all around them. She and her friends could escape it with the TARDIS, back into the safety of the distant, _distant_ past. But for the professor, Chantho, and all the people and creatures around them, time was running out. Their days were numbered, their breaths finite. All the nebulas had been consumed, black holes must be raging all around them, and the remaining stars would be gone soon. Planets would freeze and crumble. Soon there would be nothing left at all. And no one could stop it.  
  
But there had to be something after the end, right? Something new? Everything couldn’t just… _stop_.   
  
Could it?  
  
“What do you think’s out there?” the Doctor murmured.   
  
“I don’t know,” the professor replied. “A colony, a city, some sort of haven? The Science Foundation created the Utopia Project thousands of years ago to preserve mankind–to find a way of surviving beyond the collapse of reality itself. Now perhaps they found it.”  
  
“But,” Rose interrupted, “an’ I’m not a scientist or anythin’, but–but if it’s all ending–time, space, reality itself–if it’s all gone, then that–that sounds like the Void. That’s nothing. How could you survive that? It makes no sense.”   
  
The Doctor was smiling at her proudly. Jack, too. Yana and Chantho, however, looked troubled.  
  
“Sorry,” she apologized. “Didn’t mean to upset you.”  
  
“No, it’s not that,” the professor assured her. He sighed. “Trouble is, I agree with you. But no one can deny that time is running out. If we go, we may die. If we stay, we will die. Here we have a place, but we’re running low on supplies and resources and, frankly, morale and while the Futurekind may be primitive, they are not stupid. Sooner or later they’ll find their way in. Out there is a possible future. Utopia is hope. It may end up that Utopia can’t save us, but at least we made it, at least we aren’t left wondering. So it’s worth a look, don’t you think?”  
  
Rose hesitated before nodding.   
  
“I agree,” the Doctor said. He looked at the computer screen again. “The signal keeps modulating, did you notice? So it’s not automatic. There’s a good sign. Someone’s out there. And that’s…oh, that’s a navigation matrix, isn’t it? So you can fly without stars to guide you.”  
  
The professor didn’t appear to be listening. He had his eyes squeezed shut, mouth twisted in pain, and seemed to be struggling with something.   
  
“Professor?” Rose asked quietly.   
  
He didn’t respond, other than to squeeze his eyes tighter.   
  
Alarmed, Rose reached out to touch his arm. “Professor!”  
  
He jumped at the contact and stepped away from her, shaking his head as if to clear it. “I um– Right, that’s enough talk! There’s work to do. Now, if you could leave, thank you!” He stepped through their group, walking around the machines.  
  
The Doctor studied him critically. “You alright?”  
  
“Yes. I’m fine. And busy!” He and picked up a little piece of equipment with a series of wires attached.  
  
“Except…” The Doctor leaned on the machine in front of him. “That rocket’s not going to fly, is it?”   
  
The professor sighed. Chantho lowered her head.   
  
“This footprint mechanism thing, it’s not working,” stated the Doctor.  
  
“We’ll find a way!” the professor insisted resolutely.  
  
“You’re stuck on this planet.” The Doctor went on. “And you haven’t told them, have you?” The professor looked away and sat down on the edge of one of the consoles. “That lot out there, they still think they’re gonna fly.”  
  
“Well, it’s like I told your friend–erm, what was it?”  
  
“Rose,” she said.   
  
“Yes, Rose. It’s like I told you. Utopia is hope. As long as they believe they can one day reach Utopia then they can live in hope. It’s better that way.”  
  
“Quite right, too!” The Doctor declared. “And I must say, Professor–” He shucked his coat and Jack took it from him fluidly. The Doctor glanced at him surprise before continuing. “Um, what was it?”  
  
“Yana.”  
  
“Professor Yana. This new science is well beyond me, but all the same, a boost reversal circuit, in any time frame, must be a circuit, which reverses the boost. So, I wonder what would happen–” he took the circuit from Yana and pulled out his sonic screwdriver “–if I did–” he aimed to sonic at it and it whirred for a few seconds “–this!” He flipped the switch.  
  
The reaction was immediate. All around them, lights that had been dim and machines that had been simply idling suddenly flared to life. A siren began wailing. They all looked around in amazed delight.  
  
Chantho gasped in awe. “Chan–it’s working–tho!”  
  
Professor Yana rose to his feet and turned in a full circle just to confirm that everything really _was_ working. “But how did you _do_ that?!”  
  
“Oh, we’ve been chatting away. I forgot to tell you–” the Doctor grinned broadly. “I’m brilliant!”  
  
A smile to match the Doctor’s slowly spread across Yana’s face and in his eyes weariness of years of tirelessly working gave way to a new spark of hope and determination. “I should say so! Ha! Ahaha!”   
  
Rose sauntered over and nudged the Doctor with her shoulder. “Good job that worked. After that build up, woulda been kinda awkward if it hadn’t.”  
  
The Doctor smiled and winked at her. “Well, you know me.” He kissed the top of her head and raced over to one of the consoles, studied the screen for a moment, and began typing away.   
  
Rose noticed Yana staring at her in her peripheral vision. She glanced his way, arching her eyebrows.   
  
“Married hermits?” he asked.   
  
She smiled, not bothering to correct him. “Well, it’s better with two.”  
  
“Hmm. I suppose so.”  
  


~*~

  
  
Martha and Chantho had gone off to get more circuits, the Doctor and professor were busy working together, so Rose, without anything of use to do, drifted over to Jack. She was curious about him, about this long life he had lived since she had last seen him. How he had seemingly come back from the dead, and…she wanted to know why there was something off about him. Was he even aware of it?  
  
He glanced up at her and smiled. “Hey, Rosie.”   
  
“Hey, Jack.” She leaned against the edge of the desk just a few feet from him and lowered her gaze, fiddling with the sleeves of her brown jacket.  
  
“You two match.” He noted.  
  
Rose smiled a bit. “His idea. We were meant to go visit Martha’s family today. I thought it would be funny. Really like these though.” She nodded to her pink converse.  
  
Jack laughed. “Very you.”  
  
She smiled at him, her eyes lingering on his face for a moment before she had to look away. He did not seem bothered by her unwillingness to look at him, thank goodness. Maybe he had not even noticed. She watched him work out of the corner of her eye for a minute. Jack had always been good at this sort of thing. Computers and machines, and he had even been good enough that the Doctor had allowed him to assist in TARDIS repairs and maintenance. She was impressed that he had managed to transfer his skills to this far-future equipment.  
  
“I’ve missed you,” she murmured.   
  
Jack paused and she saw his eyes close briefly. He set down the screwdriver and turned, holding out his arms. She took a deep breath and made herself breach the bit of space between them for a hug. The TARDIS hummed darkly in her mind, a quiet warning.   
  
_Why?_ She asked. _What’s wrong with him?_   
  
The TARDIS did not answer.  
  
“Missed you too.” Jack replied quietly and let go of her. He went back to the console he was working at. “How have you been?”  
  
“Good.” She answered automatically. He deserved more than that. “Fun and hectic and amazing, y’know? But ‘s been hard, too, and we’ve had some rough spots, but, yeah, ’s all good now.”  
  
“And how’re things with him?”  
  
Rose grinned impishly.   
  
Jack glanced up, saw her an expression, and a filthy smile spread across his face. “Never slept with a Time Lord–”  
  
“And you’re never gonna.”  
  
“–so you gotta tell me: what’s he like? Is he any good?” Jack asked.  
  
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”  
  
Jack frowned petulantly. “Aw, c’mon, Rose. I’ve spent the last century and a half wondering if you two ever hooked up. And if you’re never gonna let me sleep with him, you gotta at least throw me a bone. So come on. Spill.”  
  
Rose leaned closer to him, her voice dropping to a soft murmur, “He’s _amazing_.”  
  
His filthy grin came right back. “And do I get to hear any details?”  
  
“You know…” the Doctor interrupted loudly from across the room. “I can hear everything you’re saying.”  
  
Jack craned his neck to see him, grinning unabashedly. “And? Do I have to get it all from Rose or are you planning of sharing?”  
  
The Doctor glared at him for a moment before going back to work.  
  
“Moody old bastard,” Jack muttered. “At least that hasn’t changed.”  
  
“He’s not like that all time,” she promised. “Not anymore. He has his moments. He’s a lot more…” She paused, licking her lips, and tried to decide how to articulate it. “He’s happier. Hyper. Manic sometimes. He’s got one hell of an oral fixation, too. He’s still a jealous sod, though.”   
  
“And you?” Jack looked her up and down. “You’ve changed too. You’ve grown up.”  
  
Rose shrugged. “Had to. Spent three months living on Earth recently without him. Got a proper job, flat, everything. Didn’t like it much.”  
  
Jack nodded. “Bridgeton, Kentucky, USA, March 2003.”   
  
Rose jerked her head up in surprise.   
  
“What? I told you I’ve been looking for you guys. I got there three days after the incident. I would’ve gotten there sooner but when UNIT found out someone from T–well, when they heard I was coming, they did their best to slow me down. I work for a different agency than theirs and, well, we don’t exactly get along.”  
  
“That’s the day we left. You must’ve just missed us.” She sighed. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“It’s not your fault.” Jack told her firmly. “But in case anything like that happens again, or if you ever need me for anything in the early 21st century, anything at all, go to the Road Dahl Plass in Cardiff. The place where we landed back with that Slitheen woman? There’s a tourist office by the waterfront, just down on the docks. Go in and tell whoever’s at the desk that you need to see Jack.”   
  
“Road Dahl Plass, Cardiff.” She nodded. “Got it.”  
  
He stared at her intently for a moment longer then nodded. “Good.”  
  
“Oh those damned galaxies!” Yana said loudly from across the room.   
  
Jack and Rose looked his way.   
  
“They had to go and collapse. Some admiration would have been nice. Just a little. Just once.”  
  
“Well, you’ve got it now.” The Doctor replied. “But that footprint engine thing. You can’t activate it from onboard. You’re staying behind.”  
  
“With Chantho,” he confirmed. “She won’t leave without me. Simply refuses.”  
  
“You’d give your life so they could fly.”  
  
“Oh, I think I’m a little too old for Utopia. Time I had some sleep.” Yana smiled.  
  
 _“Professor!”_ a man’s voice said over the intercom. _“Tell the Doctor we’ve found his blue box.”_  
  
Jack looked over Rose’s shoulder at the monitor she was sitting in front of.   
  
Rose hopped down to have a look and smiled. “Doctor! It’s the TARDIS, she’s in the silo.”  
  
Yana and the Doctor came over to have a look at the screen and the Doctor grinned. “Professor, it’s a wild stab in the dark, but I may just have found you a way out.” He patted Yana on the shoulder then headed off to fetch the TARDIS.  
  
Yana stared at the screen for a long moment then jumped, shaking his head, and went to sit down on a stool. Jack and Rose watched him go, glancing at each other. Jack shrugged and went back to work. Rose, however, approached Yana cautiously and leaned down to have a look at his face. His eyes were shut and he was taking quick, pained breaths.   
  
“Professor?” she murmured.  
  
“They never stop…” he whimpered.   
  
“What never stops? Professor, what’s wrong?”  
  
He made a pained sound and waved her away with a gruff, “I’m fine!”   
  
Rose sighed and took a step back. Trillions of years and men never changed. Yana winced again and even though she did not try to approach him, she kept her eye on him. 


	54. Master of Time

  
  
A few minutes after the Doctor left, the TARDIS materialized in the lab. A minute after that, the Doctor came bursting out with a thick cable. “Extra power!” he shouted. He knelt down in front of a table and plugged the cord into an outlet. “Little bit of a cheat, but who’s counting? Jack, you’re in charge of the retro-feeds.”  
  
The TARDIS grumbled in Rose’s mind again. She clearly didn’t want Jack anywhere near her right now.   
  
The lab door slid open. Martha and Chantho had returned with the circuits.   
  
Martha saw the TARDIS sitting there and grinned. “Oh, am I glad to see that thing.”  
  
Chantho noticed Yana, who was still sitting and holding his head. “Chan–professor, are you alright–tho?”  
  
“Yes, I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine!” he insisted when she didn’t move. “Just get on with it.”  
  
“Rose, I need your help over here. And you two, connect those circuits into the spar–same as that last lot,” Jack ordered them. “But quicker.”  
  
“Ooh, yes sir.” Martha teased but she got to it. She and Chantho set their circuits down on the desk and Martha started handing them to the alien woman one at a time. They worked in silence for a minute, listening to the Doctor and Yana talking about noise and headaches or whatever, and the quiet murmuring between Rose and Jack as they worked across the room.   
  
Martha decided it was time to strike up a conversation of her own. “So, how long have you been with the professor?”  
  
“Chan–seventeen years–tho.”  
  
“Blimey. A long time.”  
  
“Chan–I adore him–tho,” she replied quietly, glancing down. She put another circuit into the spar.   
  
Martha made a face. “Oh right, and he–”  
  
“Chan–I don’t think he even notices–tho.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”   
  
“Chan–but I am happy to serve–tho!” she assured her.  
  
“Do you mind if I ask? Do you have to start every sentence with ‘chan’?”  
  
Chantho looked surprised. “Chan–yes–tho.”  
  
“And end every sentence with…”  
  
“Chan–tho–tho.”  
  
She tilted her head. “What would happen if you didn’t?”  
  
“Chan–that would be rude–tho!” She laughed once breathlessly as if the very idea were scandalous.  
  
Martha grinned shrewdly. “What, like swearing?”  
  
She glanced over to make sure no one was listening and lowered her voice. “Chan–indeed–tho.”  
  
“Go on, just once.”  
  
“Chan–I can’t–tho!” She said nervously.   
  
“Oh, do it for me.”  
  
Chantho seemed to struggle with it for a moment. Then, “No!” And she giggled madly.   
  
Martha laughed, pressing her lips together, and glanced at the others. No one was paying them any mind.  
  
When they were done plugging in the circuits, Chantho hit the switch to turn on the system and then they joined Jack, the Doctor, and Rose at the central panel.   
  
She noticed Rose looking at Jack every so often but never for long, not even if they were talking. The Doctor, too. Martha folded her arms. Weren’t they all supposed to be old friends? There had been some major tension earlier but it had faded away pretty quickly. Except neither of them seemed to want to look at Jack for very long. It was really weird. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with him–hell, she wouldn’t mind _never_ looking away, he really was something–but, then, other than a few pictures, she’d never seen him before. She hadn’t recognized him when he was lying dead on the ground.   
  
“I think…” the Doctor said suddenly. “I think that’s it.” He looked around at them all. “I think we’re ready.”  
  
“Excellent!” Yana crowed and hurried over to a computer screen. He sat down on the stool in front of it and typed something into the keyboard.  
  
A minute later, a man’s voice came through the speakers and the word ATILLO appeared on the screen in front of Yana. _“Professor, are you getting me?”_ A moment later, the face of Lieutenant Atillo appeared as well.  
  
“I’m here!” Yana said. “We’re ready! Now all you need to do is connect the couplings. Then we can launch.” The screen made a beeping sound and Atillo’s image faded from the screen. Yana waved his hands furiously. “God sakes! This equipment!”   
  
Martha ducked under some tubes hanging from the ceiling and ran over to him.   
  
“Needs rebooting all the time!”  
  
“Anything I can do?” she asked. “I’ve finished that lot.”  
  
“Yes, if you could.” He stood up so she could sit on the stool. “Just press the reboot key every time the picture goes out.”  
  
“Certainly, sir. Just don’t ask me to do shorthand.”   
  
He laughed once and patted her on the shoulder. She jabbed the reboot key once and the static onscreen gave way to Atillo’s face again.   
  
_“Are you still there?”_  
  
“Ah, present and correct!” Yana said. “Send your man inside. We’ll keep the levels down from here.”  
  
Atillo nodded and disappeared from the screen. It beeped again and the image shifted to a bright red, overexposed room with five large cylinders in the middle. A man wearing a thick white HAZMAT suit entered the room and headed for the cylinders. _“He’s inside,”_ Atillo reported. _“And good luck to him.”_  
  
“Keep the levels below the red,” Yana ordered someone.  
  
“Where is that room?” The Doctor asked.  
  
“It’s underneath the rocket. Fix the couplings and the footprint can work.” Yana came back over to the screen and from the sound of it someone was following. “But the entire chamber s flooded with stet radiation.”  
  
“Stet?” Rose asked from across the room.  
  
“Never heard of it,” the Doctor said directly behind Martha. She turned to look.   
  
“You wouldn’t want to.” Yana told them. “But it’s safe enough. We can hold the radiation back from here.”  
  
 _Famous last words,_ Martha thought.   
  
They watched the screen in tense silence. The man had gotten started on the first of the couplings–tapping a code into a keypad on top. The screen started to fizz out again and Martha tapped the reboot key several times in succession before they lost the picture. On screen, the man got the top of the coupling open and he gripped a handle inside, struggling to turn it. After a tense moment, it slowly turned and dropped down.  
  
A klaxon began to blare. Martha jumped to her feet in alarm.  
  
“It’s rising…0.2!” Yana warned. “Keep it level!”  
  
“Yes, sir!” Jack said. The klaxon faded.  
  
The man on screen got the second coupling open. He twisted the handle and the thing inside dropped. They all breathed a little easier.  
  
Without warning, the entire silo seemed to shudder around them. Rose nearly lost her balance, only just catching herself on the machine in front of her. She felt the Doctor’s hands on her waist a split second after, steadying her. Lights that had previously shown brightly suddenly became dim or went out all together. The klaxon began blaring again and another high-pitched alarm started going off rapidly too.   
  
“Chan–we’re losing power–tho!” She cried.   
  
Jack put his hands on her shoulder to steady her. But it just got worse. The alarms got louder and the all the monitors started flashing warningly. Martha glanced at Rose and saw her own fear reflected back at her.  
  
Jack and the Doctor raced from terminal to terminal, flipping switches and pressing keys to no avail.  
  
“Radiation’s rising!” The Doctor yelled from across the room.   
  
“We’ve lost control!” Jack shouted back.   
  
Yana was spinning a nozzle on the board in front of him frantically. “The chamber’s going to flood,” he told the two women behind him.  
  
“Can’t you do something?” Rose cried desperately. Her eyes flicked to the man on screen. “He’ll die!”  
  
“Jack!” the Doctor barked. “Override the vents!”  
  
“I’m trying!” He shouted. His hands flitted around a series of cables and he finally grabbed one, hauling it over to another machine, and pulled another cable up. He held both live cables up, and Martha knew what he was going to do. “We can jump start the override!” was the last thing he said before shoving them together.  
  
“DON’T! IT’S GOING TO FLARE!”   
  
Too late. Electricity rippled through Jack’s body, humming and fizzing lethally. Jack screamed in pain, his body shuddering violently.  
  
Rose shrieked. “JACK!”  
  
The cables slipped out of Jack’s hands as his body slumped to the floor. The humming and sizzling faded as the cables were separated. Jack did not move.   
  
“Jack!” Rose screamed again, clamoring over the thick wires and cables on the floor to reach him.   
  
Martha beat her there, dropping to her knees beside him. “I’ve got him.”  
  
Even in her despair, Rose couldn’t quite bring herself to kneel down next to him. Everything about him that was _wrong_ was gone. Completely gone. Just like it had been when she’d first seen him outside the TARDIS earlier. That in itself was disturbing. Yet still that unfamiliar instinct was growling at her, warning her to not get to close to him. Even now, as helpless as he was, he was still dangerous.   
  
“Chan–don’t touch the cables–tho,” Chantho cautioned and tossed the cables, both still live, aside.   
  
Yana leaned over him, hands on his knees. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”  
  
Martha pressed her ear to Jack’s chest and her lips pressed together tightly. A sob bubbled past Rose’s lips and she covered her mouth with her hand, tears forming in her eyes.  
  
The Doctor, however, was perfectly calm, standing behind all of them and looking down at Jack with near apathy. “The chamber’s flooded with radiation, yes?”  
  
Martha gripped Jack’s chin with one hand, pinching his nose with the other, and took a deep breath, inhaling into Jack’s mouth. God, how could Martha stand to be that close to him?! Unless, of course, she really couldn’t sense what Rose seemed to. That was starting to seem more likely.   
  
“Without the couplings, the engines will never start.” Yana gestured at Jack’s lifeless body furiously. “It was all for nothing!”   
  
“Oh, I don’t know.” The Doctor walked forward, still calm as ever, and pulled Martha up gently. “Martha, leave him.”  
  
She struggled against his hold. “You’ve gotta let me try!”  
  
“Come on. Come on. Just listen to me. Now leave him alone.” Martha looked at him in bewilderment but she made no move towards Jack again. “It strikes me, Professor, you’ve got a room no man can’t enter without dying. Is that correct?”  
  
He laughed once humorlessly. “Yes.”  
  
“Well…”  
  
As if on cue, there was that surge of power in the air, and Jack jerked back to life with a wild gasp. Rose inhaled sharply, jumping away from him on instinct as the _wrongness_ came pulsing back with the force of a wrecking ball. Everyone stared at him with varying degrees of shock and horror. Everyone except the Doctor, who removed his glasses and tucked them into his coat pocket nonchalantly. “I’ve got just the man.”  
  
Jack looked between the lot of them for a moment. “Was someone kissing me?”  
  
Martha laughed breathlessly, almost hysterically. Jack heaved himself to his feet and dusted his trousers off. “No, really, was someone kissing me?  
  
“Chan–but that is impossible–tho!” the Malmooth woman cried, trembling as she backed away.   
  
“Not as impossible as you might think.” He wagged his eyebrows and she nearly fell over.   
  
“Jack,” the Doctor drawled. “I believe your…unique services are required. That chamber’s entirely flooded and anyone who goes in is a dead man.”  
  
Jack’s eyes hardened and he stared at him for a moment. “I see. What do I have to do?” he asked Yana.  
  
Yana licked his lips pensively, shook his head quickly, and motioned for him to come with him. He led Jack over to the monitor that showed the chamber. “Each one of those cylindrical units holds a coupling that must be rotated in order for it to drop and connect. In order to open them, you must enter a thirteen-digit code on the keypad. The first four digits of the code are 9-8-4-1, then you repeat that two more times, and the final number is the unit number plus three. So the code for Unit 2 would be 9-8-4-1-9-8-4-1-9-8-4-1-5. Understand?”  
  
“‘9-8-4-1 times three, unit number plus three. Got it. Anything else?”  
  
“Hurry.”  
  
“I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that,” the Doctor said.   
  
Rose glared at him. How could he be so bloody calm? Jack had died. Twice. And he was still standing. He was nauseating to look at and be around. And the Doctor was acting like it was all old news to him.   
  
_You knew about this_. Rose realized, narrowing her eyes. As if sensing her anger, the Doctor glanced down. _You knew something had happened to him. That’s why we never went back._   
  
He arched one eyebrow.  
  
“Well, then!” Jack said loudly and clapped his hands. “What are we waiting for?”  
  
Jack grabbed his coat off the shelf he’d tossed it on, and slid it on. The Doctor tore his gaze from Rose’s and went to grab his, too. He struggled with the sleeve just a bit like he did sometimes, but before Rose could go help him, Jack held the sleeve steady so the Doctor could slip his arm in. “You comin’ too, Doc?”  
  
“Someone’s got to be in the control room.” He said. “Rose, Martha, stay here and help if you can. We’ll be back soon.”  
  
“Be careful, both of you.” Rose pleaded.   
  
“We will,” the Doctor promised. He smiled reassuringly.   
  
The moment they were out of the room and the door had shut behind them, Chantho let out a whimper. “Chan–he…was dead–tho. Chan–I sensed the lifelessness in him–tho. Chan–how is he alive again–tho?” she demanded.  
  
“Don’t look at me!” Martha held up her hands.   
  
All eyes turned to Rose. Of course they expected her to know. She was the only other one who’d displayed any sort of affection or past connection to him. She looked between the three curious faces for a moment before shaking her head. “I dunno. I–I just don’t. He used to travel with us but he never died then. But, then, he never felt wrong then, either.”  
  
“How do you mean?”  
  
“You…really can’t feel it?” Rose looked between them all again. “None of you?” They shook their heads.   
  
“Is that why you haven’t been looking at him?” Martha asked, folding her arms.  
  
She nodded. “It kind of…hurts, almost. It’s like…it’s like tryin’ to look at a bright light. Can only stand it for so long.” She fixed Martha with a meaningful look then glanced at the TARDIS.   
  
Understanding dawned on Martha’s face and she nodded once.  
  
Rose walked over to the stool in front of the computer and sank down onto it. The picture was again static, so she pressed the key she’d seen Martha pressing earlier. The computer beeped and whirled but the picture didn’t return, only the word ATILLO in big black letters on the white space at the bottom.   
  
“Guess it’s not gonna work,” Martha said behind her. “Doctor, are you there?”  
  
 _“Receiving, yeah. He’s inside.”_  
  
“And he’s alive?” Rose checked.  
  
 _“Oh, yes.”_  
  
“But he should evaporate.” Yana insisted. “What sort of a man is he?”  
  
“That,” said Rose, “is an interestin’ question.”   
  
“The Doctor sort of travels through time and space and picks people up.” Martha explained. “God, I make us sound like stray dogs.”  
  
Rose snorted.   
  
“Not you.”  
  
“Oh, no. Reckon I was stray dog, too, at one point.” Rose shrugged.  
  
“You…you travel in time?” Yana murmured.   
  
“Yep,” Rose said, popping the ‘p’. “That there, our ship, she’s called the TARDIS. Time machine.”  
  
She heard Yana slowly walk away from the screen. She glanced back and saw him staring at the TARDIS. Then she was drawn back to the computer monitor by the Doctor’s voice filtering through he speakers.  
  
 _“When did you first realize?”  
  
“Earth 1892,” Jack replied. “Got in a fight in Ellis Island. A man shot me through the heart. Then I woke up. Thought it was kinda strange. But then it never stopped. Fell off a cliff, trampled by horses, World War I, World War II, poison, starvation, a stray javelin…”_  
  
Rose winced.   
  
_“In the end, I got the message, I’m the man who can never die. And all that time you knew.”  
  
“That’s why I left you behind,” the Doctor admitted. “It’s not easy even just–just looking at you Jack, ‘cause you’re wrong.”  
  
“Thanks,” Jack hissed.   
  
“You are, I can’t help it. I’m a Time Lord. It’s instinct. Didn’t you notice how Rose wouldn’t come within two feet of you? She feels it too.” _  
  
Rose inhaled sharply and she and Martha glanced at each other.   
  
_“…Yeah, I noticed.”  
  
“Don’t take it personally. She can’t help it any more than I can. She receives all this extra sensory data from the TARDIS and her body just doesn’t know what to do with it half the time. And then there’s you. You’re a fixed point in time and space. You’re a_ fact. _That’s never meant to happen. The TARDIS reacted against you–tried to shake you off. Flew all the way to the end of the universe just to get rid of you.”  
  
“And Rose? How does she tie into this? She’s not a Time Lord.” _  
  
The Doctor was quiet for a minute. _“Didn’t you ever wonder why you’re this way?”  
  
“Every day.”  
  
“It was Rose. She ripped open the heart of the TARDIS and absorbed the Time Vortex.” _  
  
Behind her, Rose heard someone suck in a quick breath of air. It might’ve been Yana.  
  
“All the power of time and space in the hands of a twenty-year-old human. You should’ve seen her. She was…terrifying. And beautiful. She saved me. She destroyed the entire Dalek race in seconds. All she did was wave her hand and then…dust.”  
  
 _“And what about me? I remember I was facing three Daleks. Death by extermination. Then I was alive again.”  
  
“That was Rose. She brought you back to life.” _  
  
Rose gasped, hand flying to her mouth.   
  
_“But she couldn’t control it,” the Doctor continued. “She brought you back forever.”_  
  
Rose sprang to her feet and scrambled away from the screen, knocking over the chair in her haste. _Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God_. What had she done?   
  
“Chan–Rose, are you alright–tho?” Chantho fretted.   
  
Rose shook her hand quickly and gripped the edge of the table for support. Chantho picked up the stool and set it near her and Rose sank back into it. It was her fault. It was all her fault! Jack was _wrong_ because she’d made him this way. _We made him this way,_ she thought at the TARDIS. And the Doctor knew. He’d known all this time but he never said anything.   
  
_“And…I don’t suppose she could change me back?” Jack asked.  
  
“No. I took the power out of her. She’s been showing signs of residual effects for about a year now, but that’s mostly just her body reacting to things she’s receiving from the TARDIS. You can’t hold something as powerful as a TARDIS’s heart in your body for as long as she did and not be affected. But in order for her to change you back she’d have to re-absorb the Heart and I can’t let her do that. Not even for you, Jack. It would kill her.”   
  
Jack sighed loudly. “And there’s nothing you can do?”  
  
“No. If I took the power…well, I’d survive through regeneration… but if a Time Lord were to hold that power and wield it the way she did, he’d become a god. A vengeful god. So it’s probably best if I don’t.”  
  
Jack sighed again. “I see.” _  
  
He sounded so dejected, so hopeless in that moment, that Rose couldn’t hold back a tiny sob. This was all her fault. She’d done this. The more she thought about it, the more the details started filtering back in. She remembered sensing that he was dead through the haze of golden light and power. A sort of… hole where his life should’ve been. And hundreds, no, thousands of similar holes…all the other people in the Gamestation that had been murdered.   
  
_Their timelines severed abruptly, their screams of agony rippling through from the past… Wanting to save them all but something stopping her from doing it. Knowing it was wrong. Doing it anyway for Jack._  
  
Rose blinked, suddenly realizing that Martha was kneeling in front of her, concerned.   
  
“Are you alright?” Martha asked.  
  
She shook her head quickly, dispelling the old memories. “Yeah. Yeah, ‘m fine. Just rememberin’.”   
  
Martha cocked her head to one side and opened her mouth to ask what she meant. But then Chantho spoke. “Chan–Professor, what is it–tho?”  
  
Yana was leaning against a terminal for support, looking very much like he was trying to hold back tears. And failing if the tear tracks on his face were anything to go by. “It’s time travel! They say there was time travel back in the old days…” He shook his head. “I never believed. Yet here you are.” He turned his gaze towards the two time traveling women.  
  
“Here we are,” Martha agreed.   
  
“Utopia,” he said roughly. “Perhaps I’ve been working for the wrong thing all along. Perhaps I should’ve been working on time travel. We could’ve all gone back thousands of years…millions, even! We could’ve survived that way.” But then Yana shook his head. “No, no,” he chided himself. “That would be foolish. Not to mention impractical. I could never have gotten something like that to work. I’m just a stupid old man.” He sniffled. “Never could keep time, anyway. …Always late, always lost. Even this thing never worked.”   
  
Yana pulled a brass pocket watch on a chain from his pocket.   
  
Rose wiped her eyes quickly to make sure she was seeing what she thought she was seeing. Beside her, Martha stiffened. Rose glanced at her fearfully and saw a similar expression on Martha’s face. They were thinking the same thing. She jerked her head towards the watch and Martha nodded.  
  
“Time and time and time again,” Yana murmured distantly as she approached him. “Always running out on me.”   
  
Martha licked her lips. “Can I have a look at that?”  
  
“Oh, it’s only an old relic.” He chuckled. “Like me.”  
  
“Where did you get it?”  
  
“Hmm?” He frowned, looking off into the distance. “I was found with it.”  
  
“What do you mean?”   
  
“An orphan in the storm. I was a naked child found on the coast of the Silver Devastation. Abandoned…with only this.” He lifted the watch.  
  
“Have you ever opened it?” Martha asked.  
  
“Why would I? It’s broken.”  
  
“How do you know it’s broken if you never opened it?”   
  
He fiddled with the edge of the cover for a second. “It’s stuck. It’s old. It’s not meant to be.” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”  
  
Martha reached out and slowly turned it over. She took one look at the cover and let go of it like it had burned her. She gasped quietly and took a step away from him.   
  
Rose slowly stood up so as not to alarm him. She craned her neck and saw the Gallifreyan writing on the cover. She’d held an identical watch with her for nearly three months. Kept it close, slept with it curled in her hand, spent hours tracing the designs with her finger. She knew it by heart. But there was no way it could be the same watch, not after all this time. Which meant it was a different one. Which meant he was–  
  
All the air rushed out of her in a single puff.  
  
“Does it matter?” Yana asked.   
  
“No!” Martha lied quickly. He frowned at her suspiciously. “It’s…nothing. Just looks like something I’ve seen before.” She turned towards Rose, eyes wild with panic.  
  
“Listen, Martha, we’ve all got it sorted here. Why don’t you go see if the Doctor needs help?”  
  
“Right. Right, I’ll uh…I’ll go do that.” Martha nodded hurriedly and all but ran out of the room.   
  
Rose watched her go then sniffled, scrubbing at her eyes with her hands. Yana was watching her apprehensively. She met his gaze as levelly as she could. This man was a Time Lord disguised as a human. There was simply no other explanation for how he could have a fob watch. But–but the Doctor said they’d all died. So how could he be here? Unless he’d been human at the time, then maybe whatever had killed the rest of them had passed over him? He must’ve run from the war and hidden here where no one would think to look. The Doctor himself had said the Time Lords never came this far.  
  
Yana’s gaze dropped to the watch and he lifted a finger, slowly tracing the circumference. He could see it now. Properly. He’d broken through the perception filter. It wouldn’t be long now before his curiosity got the better of him, before he started hearing the whispers of the mind trapped inside the watch. She only hoped the Doctor would be able to help when he came back.  
  
The TARDIS hummed nervously in her mind and she sent Rose an image of herself standing in the console room. Rose swallowed and ducked her head, crossing the distance between herself and the TARDIS in several swift strides. She eased the door open and took one last look at Yana–he was walking towards the common area with Chantho following nervously behind–then slipped it shut behind her.  
  
Rose hurried up the ramp and gripped the edge of the console. “Did you know he was here?” She asked the controls.   
  
The room dimmed and she felt the TARDIS’s denial in her mind.  
  
“But do you know who he is?”  
  
For a moment, nothing happened, but then her mind was filled with a slew of images. Two young boys playing together and with a group of others their age, the boys being taunted by another, one of the boys lashing out at the bully while the other cowered. She heard one of them called “Thete” and the other “Koschei.” Then the voices morphed and Thete was suddenly being called “Doctor” and Koschei “Master.”   
  
_Master? The Master, that’s his name?_ she asked.  
  
The TARDIS hummed darky and the rotor bobbed up and down once.   
  
_So he and the Doctor grew up together?_ A smile stretched across her face. Oh, but this was great! Not only would there be another Time Lord around but he was an old friend of the Doctor’s!  
  
The TARDIS’s hum deepened and the all the lights in the room flickered ominously. Another rush of images filled her mind. The Master, fully grown and in several regenerations, always at odds with the Doctor. Always trying to kill him. Always trying to gain power, not caring who he hurt along the way. Hateful words, merciless sneering, evil laughter that was beyond cliché. It seemed to last forever. Scene after scene, example after example of the atrocities that man had committed. Rose clutched her head, squeezing her eyes shut in a feeble attempt to stop the horrible torrent. She stumbled around the console, her legs hitting the jump seat, and she nearly lost her balance.  
  
The images ceased and she was left panting, leaning heavily on the seat.   
  
“Ok…” she breathed, chest heaving. “Not a friend. Not a friend. Got it.”   
  
The world outside shuddered violently and the TARDIS with it. She pitched forward onto the console. Over the hum of the ship she heard the distant, but very loud rumbling of the rocket blasting off. She smiled, holding onto the console edge for dear life. The rumbling slowly died down as the rocket got further and further from them until it eventually faded altogether.  
  
Rose let go of the console and looked around, and then let go of the console. She massaged her wrist and chewed on the inside of her lip. What were they going to do? On the one hand, they’d found another Time Lord–the Doctor wasn’t the last anymore. On the other, he was a psychotic mass murderer and the Doctor would probably have to spend the rest of his days keeping him in check.   
  
Perhaps if she could get the watch off Yana before he opened it then she could let the Doctor decide to open it or not. It wouldn’t be too difficult to do. She could just go over and ask to see the watch because she thought she might have found one like it during their travels or something.  
  
She was getting ready to do just then when from outside, she heard a panicked cry. “Chan–Rose, help me–tho!”  
  
She took off across the room, down the ramp, and pulled open the door. The laboratory was now mostly dark, but she could still make out the forms of Yana and Chantho. The latter had some sort of gun in her hand and it was pointed at Yana who was advancing on her with one of the live cables. His face was twisted in a mask of fury and the fob watch dangled at his side. Open.  
  
She was too late. _Shit._  
  
“Chan–Professor, please–” the woman whimpered as she was backed into a corner.  
  
“THAT IS NOT MY NAME!” He roared. Chantho jumped. “The Professor…” he sneered, “was an invention. So perfect a disguise that I forgot who I am.”  
  
“Master!” Rose shouted, pushing the door open wider. The Time Lord jerked around in surprise at hearing his name. “Get away from her!”  
  
The Master leered at her. “Aahh… you know who I am,” he crooned. “I’ll be right with you, dear.” He let out a loud roar and thrust the cable into Chantho’s chest.   
  
Rose’s cry of, “No!” was completely drowned out by the Malmooth’s shrill scream of agony.   
  
Her body convulsed several times, the gun slipping from her hand, and then the Master pulled the cable back. She crumpled to the floor.   
  
He turned towards Rose. She gasped and backed into the TARDIS. She tried to slam the door shut but the thick cable the Doctor had brought out for extra power was still in the way. She looked around frantically for some way to disconnect it and spotted a connector just near the top of the ramp. Tripping over it in her haste, she clambered up the ramp towards the connector and twisted it frantically. Her hands slipped on the metal and she cursed the Doctor’s superior strength for making it so tight. She finally managed to untwist it when she heard the door open.  
  
Rose looked up. The Master stood there with the jar containing the Doctor’s hand, smirking at her. He set the jar down near the door and grabbed the cable, yanking it from her grasp with one sharp tug. Rose scrambled to her feet, backing away towards the console as the Master tossed it outside and shut the door behind him. He flipped the lock.  
  
Rose’s heart galloped in her chest. She could always run. It would be easy to lose him in the maze of the halls and the TARDIS would definitely assist her. But doing so would leave him to do as he pleased in the console room. He would steal the TARDIS if she gave him the chance. Well, that wasn’t going to happen. She swallowed, steeling herself. She’d have to fight him. If she could just…just get him down long enough for the Doctor to get here then he could do something. He knew how to defeat the Master. He’d done it time and time again.   
  
The Master was looking around the console room with interest, like he had all the time in the world. “Well, I must say, this is a change. It’s never been so…brown and uneven before. What is this, coral?” He rapped on one of the struts. “Pah. Still, it’s been worse.” He finally settled his gaze on Rose. “But this is the most unusual thing of all.”  
  
She glowered at him.   
  
“Rose, wasn’t it? Human, too, I take it? From Earth?”   
  
She said nothing but began to edge around the console, glancing down periodically. Where was that damn mallet?   
  
“The Doctor’s always been fond of your species and that ridiculous planet,” he went on. “He likes to keep a little posse around to help him out. You’re always so loyal, like dogs. Your friend was right. He picks you stray mutts up, trains you to be good, and you’re loyal for life. But I never thought I’d see the day that he’d lower himself to actually mate with one of you!” He laughed mockingly. “Oh, how the mighty have fallen!”  
  
“Fuck off,” she spat.   
  
He laughed again and advanced towards her. “Feisty! Is that what he likes about you? Or is there…more?”  
  
Rose stepped backwards again, glancing down. There! Just in front of the jumpseat! The mallet! She licked her lips. He was only about four feet from her now. She’d have to be quick. But first she had to get his attention off her.  
  
“Get off my TARDIS.”   
  
“Your TARDIS? _Your_ TARDIS?” He guffawed.   
  
_Get his attention!_ Rose thought at the ship. _Do anything!_ “Last chance!” she warned. Now!  
  
A huge shower of sparks burst up from the console, hitting the Master right in the face. He cried out in shock and hopefully pain and Rose dove for the mallet. He saw what she was doing and lunged at her. She swung the mallet up with a loud grunt of exertion. It hit him in the shoulder hard and knocked him off balance. Rose leaped towards him and swung the mallet again. It hit him in the side and she managed to knock him into the console, which released another shower of sparks.   
  
Someone started pounding furiously on the doors. Rose turned to look automatically. “Doctor?!” she shouted.  
  
“ROSE, ARE YOU IN THERE? LET ME IN!”  
  
The TARDIS was soundproof; the Doctor wouldn’t be able to hear her even she shouted. Rose glanced at the Master and tried to dart past him but he lunged at her. She swiped the mallet at him, missed, and scrambled away from him.   
  
She heard the lock rattle for a few seconds and he smacked the door. “He’s bolted it! You have to open it from the inside.” the Doctor shouted.   
  
The Master pushed himself up and pressed a button on the console, activating the external speakers. “I’m afraid she’s a bit busy right now, Doctor!”   
  
“Who are you?!”  
  
“It’s the Master!” Rose shouted and swung the mallet again but the Master was ready. He avoided it easily, swinging his fist around. It connected with the side of her face and she was sent sprawling to the floor. The mallet landed a few feet away. She let out a pained yelp and the TARDIS’s hum deepened until it was so low it may as well have been a growl.   
  
The Doctor started to pound on the doors furiously. “LEAVE HER ALONE!”  
  
Rose pushed herself onto her hands and knees and crawled frantically towards her only weapon. The Master kicked her hard in the side, knocking her aside. She yelped again as she collided painfully with the railing.  
  
“JUST LEAVE HER ALONE!”  
  
The Master laughed and kicked her in the stomach. She curled in on herself, to protect her stomach, covering her head with her hands, and she received a sharp kick to her arms. One to her shin. Then he reached down, seizing her by her hair and pulled her head out from behind her arms. She screamed in pain. He fisted one hand in the front of her shirt and hauled her the rest of the way up.  
  
“STOP IT!” the Doctor shouted.   
  
“Say please!” the Master ordered.  
  
“PLEASE!”  
  
The Master grinned at Rose and tossed her back against the railing. She crumpled to the ground.  
  
“Please what?”   
  
Rose’s entire body felt hot and when she exhaled it sounded like an angry hiss. He’d broken at least one of her ribs and she’d have plenty of bruises and he hadn’t even really put forth much effort. He was gonna kill her before she ever got a chance to let the Doctor in. She couldn’t let him and if that meant killing him, well…  
  
 _But he’s a Time Lord,_ a tiny voice piped up in her mind.  
  
 _He’s an evil bastard of a Time Lord that’s fixin’ to kill you and then steal the TARDIS,_ a louder voice snapped, silencing the quieter one.   
  
The Master was looking at the door, not at her. Good. She could use that to her advantage. The mallet was still only a few feet away, closer to the Master than to her, but if she could just get to it… No, there was a good chance that wouldn’t work. He was too quick.   
  
From outside, she could hear Jack and Martha shouting. Something about the Futurekind. In fact, if she listened hard enough, she could hear feral shouting and snarling. If they’d somehow gotten into the silo then that meant the TARDIS was the only place. So she had to get it open for them or else they’d die.   
  
“Please, leave her alone,” the Doctor begged.   
  
“Use my name,” he ordered.  
  
There was only one thing for it. Rose pushed herself into a crouch, hardly noticing the pain in her side. It was as if it was in some other body. His attention was still on the door but his injured side was facing her. She coiled to spring.  
  
“Master, please, just leave her alone!”  
  
Rose leaped. She rammed into the Master right on the spot where she’d hit him with the mallet. He went sprawling to the floor and she fell back on her bum. But now she was close enough to the mallet and she had it in her hands and was on her feet before he could even roll onto his knees. The Master only had time to look up and see her standing over him, eyes blazing vibrantly gold, before she swung the mallet down and hit him in the head.   
  
He crumpled to a heap on the ground just under the console and did not move.  
  
Rose stood over him, breathing heavily for a moment, listening to the Doctor bang on the door and the TARDIS hum furiously. But slowly the heat in her blood faded and as she stared at the dent in his head, a horrible feeling of dread began to fill her and she dropped the mallet.   
  
“Oh God. Oh God. Oh God,” she whimpered.  
  
“ROSE?! ROSE!”   
  
“I–I think I’ve killed him!”   
  
The Master exploded in a flash of blinding colorful light. The force of it sent Rose flying and she hit something solid. Pain exploded in the back of her head and things went dark. She thought she might’ve heard someone screaming.   
  
When she came to, the old man was gone and a younger man with short, light brown hair, maybe in his 30s, wearing the old man’s clothes was jumping to his feet. He looked around at the console room in surprise and whooped loudly. He raced around the console, cackling with glee.  
  
Rose lifted her hand to the back of her head and her fingers came away wet with blood. Not good. She whimpered softly and the Master’s eyes zeroed in on her.  
  
“Now then, Doctor. Ooh, new voice. Hello!” he bellowed. “Anyway, let’s get right to it, shall we? Your little wife here just killed me. How rude! And inappropriate.”  
  
“She’s not my wife!” The Doctor cried desperately. “She’s just a companion!”  
  
The Master knelt down in front of Rose. “Oh, I think she’s more than that. Is that _Plyra Seut_ around your neck?” His hand shot forward and seized Rose’s necklace. It held fast and dug into Rose’s skin and she found herself behind pulled up like a dog by its collar.   
  
She cried out in pain. “Let go!”   
  
He ignored her. “Oh, yes, I think it is. How _romantic_ ,” he sneered. Letting go of the necklace, he gripped her arms so tightly that she couldn’t even struggle, and never looked away from her as he spoke. “I’m going to leave you here, Doctor. But before we go, I just want you to know that I am going to do to her exactly what she did to me. And then some.”   
  
Rose worked up a mouthful of saliva and blood and spat it in his face. He dug his nails into her skin then tossed her unceremoniously to the ground, stalking towards the console.  
  
The Doctor banged on the door again. “Master, I’m begging you, please stop! Stop and think! Everything’s changed! We’re the only ones left! Just let me in and let her go!”  
  
“Uh, let me think. How about no!” He flipped the dematerialization switch.   
  
“No! You can’t!” Rose shouted.   
  
The Master moved around the console, spinning knobs and flipping levers. The console sparked and popped violently. The rotor stopped moving. “Oh no you don’t!” the Master snarled and he pushed a lever as far up as it would go and the rotor began wheezing up and down again.  
  
“End of the universe!” he shouted. “Have fun. Bye-bye!”   
  
And then he advanced on Rose. 


	55. Too Little, Too Late

  
The Doctor watched helplessly as the TARDIS dematerialized. The last thing he heard over the wheezing of the ship and the roaring of the Futurekind, was Rose screaming, “NO!”  
  
His breathing increased as his connection to the TARDIS was stretched and warped as she was pulled farther and farther away from him. There was a great, gaping hole where she should fill his mind, and now she was nothing but a tiny speck in the corner. It was painful, and he understood what Rose had meant when she said it was uncomfortable to not be in the same time as the TARDIS. This was not the first time he had been in a different time as her, but never, in all their years together, had they been separated by so much time and space.   
  
And worse, he could no longer feel Rose’s mind, or see her timelines. They were completely, utterly _gone_. That never happened unless someone was dead.   
  
His hearts nearly stopped at the thought.  
  
Knowing the Master though, death would be one of the kinder fates for Rose. The thought of what that bastard might be doing to her caused the Doctor’s blood to run hot. The world around him grew into sharper focus. Time seemed to slow around him, the roaring of the Futurekind and the screams of his companions dulling, as he turned.   
  
Fusing the TARDIS’s coordinates was not much, but at least he could make it easier to find them. First he had to get out of here. Jack and Martha had their bodies pressed against the door. Martha was slapping at the hands reaching through, shrieking. Jack had both of his feet pressed into the ground, and was struggling to get the doors closed. The Doctor's eyes fell on Jack’s vortex manipulator. Broken, he’d said. Nothing the Doctor couldn’t fix.  
  
Time sped back up and the Doctor raced across the room. He slammed his body against Jack’s, bracing his foot against a stack of boxes near the wall, and grabbed his wrist. Pulling out the sonic, he quickly flipped through the settings to the one he needed and turned it on the manipulator.  
  
“The hell are you doing?!” Jack yelled. “We need to get the door closed!”  
  
“Hold still!” the Doctor ordered, switching to a new setting. “Don’t move!”  
  
“Look, I’m telling you, it’s broken! It hasn’t worked for years!”   
  
"Done!" He switched off his sonic, and stuffed it in his pocket. “That’s because you didn’t have me! Martha, grab hold!” He reached for Martha’s hand and pulled it onto the manipulator. “Now!”  
  
Jack let out a long grunt of exertion, and then time opened up and swallowed them whole.  
  
It was like whooshing through a colorful tunnel at a million miles per hour but without the pressure of the wind. In fact there was no sensation at all. Not even sight. The colors had to be how his mind perceived the time shift, but he could not identify them even if he tried.   
  
Time split open and, quite literally, spat the three travelers out. They appeared in the same positions they had departed from, a hundred trillion years in the future, but the moment their feet touched solid ground, the pain caught up with them. Martha slumped against the wall, holding her head. Jack stumbled around, momentarily disoriented. The Doctor doubled over, face scrunched up in pain.  
  
“Oh, my head!” Martha gasped.   
  
The Doctor was moving before the pain had even begun to fade, stumbling forward. Every single one of his senses were branching out, searching the relative time and space for any sign of Rose and his TARDIS. His connection to the latter had strengthened the moment they arrived, but it was nowhere near what it should have been. They were in the same time, but she had gone from the size of a pinhead to a golf ball in his mind, when she should have been more like a football. Rose, though, he could not locate.   
  
“Come on!” he rasped. “Come on! We have to find them! We have to find them now.”  
  
Jack grunted loudly, cracking his neck. He gave his head a quick shake, and exhaled a large puff of air. “Now hold on, Doc. We don’t even know where we are.”  
  
“Earth, 21st century, right around the time when he would’ve landed.” The Doctor whirled around, eyes wild. “We’ve got to find them _now_ before he kills her or worse!”  
  
“Doctor, he’s not going to kill her,” Jack said calmly.   
  
“Yes he will!” He shouted. “You don’t know him! He will kill her as slowly and painfully as possible simply because of what she means to me!”  
  
He turned to go and abruptly found himself behind held in place by a pair of firm arms around his torso, pinning his own arms to his sides. “Let go of me!” the Doctor snarled, struggling.  
  
But Jack refused to release him. “Doctor, listen to me! Calm down and listen to me, god dammit!”   
  
The Doctor stopped struggling, but his breathing was rapid and shallow. “What?” he spat through clenched teeth.   
  
“Listen. Everything’s going to fine. I promise you.” Jack swallowed once. “I am so sorry. I really am. For both of you. You gotta believe me.” He let go of the Doctor’s arms and backed away a few steps.   
  
“Why should I?”  
  
“That’s rich,” Jack muttered. He lifted his wrist and started punching in coordinates on his vortex manipulator. “At least you got this to work again. You’ve just made things a whole lot simpler. Both of you grab on. This is going to be worse than before.”   
  
Martha glanced at the Doctor for a second then placed her hand on top of the manipulator. He followed suit a moment after. “Where’re we going?” she asked.   
  
“Cardiff.”  
  
And then time swallowed them up again, spitting them out a second later relatively speaking, over a hundred miles to the west. The dematerialization didn’t hurt, nor did the traveling itself. It was not until after they had arrived and their bodies had rematerialized, that the stress of rocketing unprotected through time and space caught up with them. Their migraines had not even properly faded from last time, and now they were back twofold.  
  
The Doctor stumbled backwards, completely disoriented, his time senses flailing to establish themselves, and he felt his legs bump something hard. He fell backwards on his bum, and his head connected with something soft. He heard his companions groaning quietly and Jack attempting to make a joke about what positions they had landed in. The Doctor groaned, reaching up to massage his temples.   
  
His senses were starting to calm, having established his relative location. Earth, early 21st century. His timeline steadied, as did his companions', and slowly the blistering pain in his head began to dissipate. He reached out mentally and felt Martha’s timeline steady and he got close enough to Jack’s all-wrong one to know it was stable. Good. He wanted to reach out and search for Rose’s but he didn’t have the capacity to accomplish that at the moment.  
  
He felt like he was lying across a table and his head was on something soft, but not too squishy. A couch possibly.   
  
He opened his eyes and was immediately met with bright light. Wincing, he slammed them shut again as the pain in his head spiked. Okay, so seeing was temporarily out. He took a deep breath and focused on what he could hear. The steady hum of machines–possibly computers–and generators and the faint electrical buzz of lights; the steady trickle of water (odd) and from the way it echoed, he assumed the room was very large and open, probably composed of some sort of stone or cement, and various metals. Also there was a distant animal screeching, reptilian. No, avian, no…. Whatever it was, it didn’t belong in this time period.   
  
When the pain in his head had faded to a dull throb, he finally opened his eyes. The lights didn’t seem nearly as bright now, for which he was grateful. The ceiling was made of white bricks and it sloped down behind his head. A line of black caught his attention and he craned his neck to see it better.  
  
Nine thick, black letters surrounded by black lines… Even upside down he recognized the word they spelled, and something cold settled in his gut.  
  
 **TORCHWOOD.**  
  
 _No!_  
  
He lurched to his feet, knocking the table back onto the couch. Martha and Jack had both hit the floor when they had materialized, and were just now starting to sit up. “Martha!” he rasped. Martha looked up, holding her head. “Martha, get up. We’ve got to get out of here.”  
  
“What? Why?”  
  
He pointed furiously at the word on the wall. She followed his gaze, staring at the word for a moment, and he saw the moment she connected the dots. Her eyes widened and she inhaled sharply. But instead of getting to her feet and helping him locate an exit, she turned to Jack. “Why did you bring us here?”  
  
“I work here,” Jack said simply, but he was watching the Doctor warily.  
  
The Doctor glowered.  
  
“You what?!” she yelped. “But didn’t Torchwood–”  
  
“They did,” the Doctor growled. Jack swallowed nervously. “Everything Torchwood did, and you’re part of it?”  
  
“I swear, it’s not what you think. You encountered Torchwood One at Canary Wharf. We’re Torchwood Three. We were almost completely independent for years and entirely on our own since the old regime was destroyed. This Torchwood is better, I rebuilt it in your honor. Please, Doc, I’ve got so much to tell you and show you. You need to let me.”  
  
“Give me one good reason why I should!”  
  
“Rose.”  
  
That brought the Doctor up short. He pressed his lips together and took a deep breath. His body was practically vibrating with the urge to _move_ , to get away from the threat of Torchwood, and find his mate.   
  
“You’re not telling us everything,” Martha said suddenly.   
  
The brief look of guilt on Jack’s face was proof enough. He said nothing, pushing himself to his feet, and walked to the nearest computer terminal. There was another one adjacent to it, and just to the left of that was a room with blinds covering all the windows, and the doors firmly shut. Funnily enough, there was a sign taped to the door that read in bold letters: _Boldly gone where no man has gone before._  
  
Underneath it someone had scrawled in red ink: _Is that a fucking Star Wars joke?_  
  
Beneath that in blue ink, different handwriting: _That’s Star Trek. _  
  
And below that in a different shade of blue ink, different handwriting: _Shame on you, Owen._  
  
The red ink again: _Fuck off, Ianto._  
  
And lastly, at the bottom, written in black ink, a very elegant script: _That wasn’t me. But she’s right. Shame on you._  
  
The Doctor frowned. Suddenly he realized there was something bothering him, and it was not just the fact he was in Torchwood.   
  
He looked around the main room properly for the first time. It was large and open, made of cement and metal just like he had thought, with a large machine in the center of the room, covered almost entirely in metallic panels, which stretched up to the ceiling. Water trickled down the sides into a moat at the very bottom of the room, underneath a floor made of grating.  
  
Across the way was a room with glass walls that housed an array of weapons. There were no windows, and there appeared to be large pipes running up and through the walls, which meant it was probably underground. There were several doors but he could not tell if they led outside, or further into the base. Open walkways higher up in the walls revealed the other levels in the building, and then he noticed the winding staircases that led up to them. There was even a basketball hoop hanging off one of them.   
  
He turned. Behind him was a large archway that led down into a sanitary white room–some sort of infirmary, it seemed. And the couch underneath **TORCHWOOD** was well worn.   
  
All this equipment, all these rooms, items, even a box of leftover pizza at one of the computer terminals–but no people. Torchwood One had been a proper agency. Their ethics and practices were a bit questionable but they had been fully staffed, like UNIT. This place was empty. “This is a fully active branch of Torchwood, isn’t it?” he asked.  
  
“There’s only half a dozen of us, but yeah. Fully active.”  
  
“So where is everybody?”  
  
Jack shook his head, his fingers clacking away on the keyboard. “It’s standard protocol if the entire team leaves the city that one of us logs the departure date and time in case of any rift activity in our absence. There’s nothing since…last year when we all went out to the countryside. So someone’s around.” He frowned and looked around the room. “IANTO? TOSH?”  
  
There was no answer except for a screech from above and a huge mass came soaring out of what appeared to be a cave near the ceiling.   
  
Martha shrieked in surprise. “Is that a dinosaur?!”  
  
Jack smiled. “Her name’s Myfanwy.”   
  
She stared at him like he was mad.  
  
“Myfanwy indeed,” the Doctor murmured, watching the prehistoric reptile sore around the uppermost part of the room. “That’s a fully grown pteranodon… How on Earth did you–?”  
  
“Came through the Rift last year. Ianto trapped her on his own and I helped him tranquilize her. Ianto got a job; we got a pet.”  
  
“And you keep her here?”   
  
“No. Her enclosure leads out of the building and she’s free to come and go as she likes.”  
  
“Is she friendly?” Martha asked curiously.  
  
“Sort of. She doesn’t attack us. Toss her some chocolate–preferably dark–and she will love you for life.” He chuckled once more at the shock on her face then his mirth died away. “But she shouldn’t be the only one here.” He turned back to the computer terminal. “The team must just be out on a job or something.”  
  
“What kind of data do you have access to on those?” the Doctor asked curiously.  
  
“A lot.”  
  
“Can you search for any temporal disturbances or shifts? We can figure out were the TARDIS landed.”  
  
“How can you be so sure this Master bloke’s here?” Martha asked. “With the TARDIS he could’ve gone anywhere.”  
  
“No. When the TARDIS was dematerializing, I fused the coordinates. Permanently.” The Doctor explained. “He can only travel between the year 100 trillion and the last place the TARDIS landed, which is here and now. I plugged in the same coordinates to your manipulator.”  
  
“Yeah, well, either we landed too late or he landed too early.”   
  
Martha frowned and folded her arms. “What do you mean?”  
  
“I mean–” he turned to face them both with his hands on his hips “–this is not the date the TARDIS landed on.”  
  
“And how do you know that?”  
  
All at once it clicked. He’d been suspicious for a while now just from little things Jack had said and done over the last few hours and now he was sure. “Because he knows when it landed.” The Doctor stated quietly. He was calm. That was a bit surprising, considering how utterly furious he was. “Don’t you?”   
  
Jack cocked his head slightly but said nothing.  
  
“You said either the TARDIS was early or we were late, which means it’s already here. Don’t lie and pretend you didn’t know. All this equipment monitoring temporal disturbances and the rift activity–you would’ve known the moment it landed.”  
  
Jack pursed his lips and exhaled slowly. “The TARDIS doesn’t register as a temporal disturbance. That’s how you evaded Torchwood all these years.”  
  
“But that doesn’t change the fact that you’ve known this whole time. You knew about the Master, too, didn’t you? You knew Rose would get taken.” He walked towards him slowly, hands curled into fists and stuffed in his trouser pockets. It was strange, having the urge to punch someone. This body wasn’t one for physical violence. He knew how to fight but this body preferred using wit and words as weapons. Right now, however, he very much wanted his fist to make contact with the captain’s jaw. Or maybe his nose or eye. “Where are they, Jack?”  
  
He took a deep breath and let it out, turning to face him fully. “I can’t answer that.”  
  
“You better start trying.”  
  
“I can’t. We are at a serious risk for a paradox here and until I know _exactly_ when we are I can’t tell you anything. I’m sorry, Doc. Now just give me a second while I figure out the date, alright?”  
  
Martha glanced between them fearfully. The Doctor _seemed_ calm but she had been around long enough to recognize that look in his eye, the way his shoulders were tensed. He was furious. She had never seen him be physically violent, but that may have been about to change.   
  
For a long moment it was completely silent except for the trickling of water.  
  
An alarm began to blare and Martha jumped in surprise. It did not sound like a warning, though. Two orange lights on either side of a cell in the area just below them began flashing. Behind the bars, a large vault door slowly rolled aside and before it could even open all the way, a woman was wriggling through the opening. The cell doors parted, but they were not fast enough either, and she shoved them out of her way. She looked around the room wildly and skidded to a stop when she spotted them up by the computers.  
  
It was Rose.   
  
She stood there looking up at them for a moment in mixture of utter disbelief and wonder. Her chest was heaving like she had run flat out, her hair windblown and messy, and just a bit shorter than Martha remembered. She was not wearing the same clothes from earlier–a brown bomber jacket, red shirt, jeans, and a pair of worn trainers. She did not look at all hurt, either.  
  
“Hey, Rosie.” Jack greeted. “I’m back.”  
  
Rose’s lips parted and she let out a quiet, breathy noise. She glanced at him then her eyes were on the Doctor again.   
  
“Rose?” the Doctor whispered and then he was flying past Martha, nearly crashing into the railing. He cleared the small set of stairs in one hop. Rose made a sound that was half laugh, half sob and ran the last few feet to him.   
  
They collided at the bottom of the stairs. She threw her arms around his shoulders and he crushed her tightly to him, lifting her right off the floor. Rose buried her face in his neck, clutching desperately at his back, and sobbed loudly. She pulled back as he set her down, her hands moving to his face and tracing every inch like she was trying to commit it to memory, and then she pulled him down for a kiss.   
  
Martha looked away to give them a moment of privacy. Her eyes fell on the only other occupant of the room: Jack. He was watching them with a mixture of relief and sadness. It was obvious why. Rose must have been here for a while before Jack left with them. He really had known the entire time. But then cold settled in her belly and a new question arose in her mind.   
  
_Just how long has it been for Rose?_  
  
Rose, for her part, could not believe it. She had been waiting _so long_ for this moment, not knowing for sure if it would ever happen, but hoping and praying that it would. She had forgotten just how it felt when he held her in his arms, the way his hair felt when it slid through his fingers, the quiet humming noise in the back of his throat he made when he was happy, his scent, his taste, the way his lean body felt against hers.   
  
She pulled back when the need for air became too great and sucked in a big gulp of air then pressed a quick succession of kisses to his lips. “You’re here!” she gasped between kisses. “You’re here…you’re here…”  
  
She rested her forehead on his, opening her eyes and blinking away the tears so she could see him.   
  
“Rose, how…?” he whispered. “How are you here? How are you–? You…you’re not hurt.” He took a step back so he could see her properly. “You’re not hurt at all. Not even a scratch. But I–I _heard_ you…he said he’d…”  
  
 _Oh, God._ He didn’t understand yet. He thought it’d been minutes for her, maybe hours at best. The realization brought a fresh wave of tears to her eyes and she covered her mouth with her hands, shaking her heard. “Oh, Doctor,” she murmured. “Those injuries–they healed months ago.”  
  
The Doctor stiffened as the reality of their situation finally began to dawn on him. She could practically hear the thoughts whizzing around his brain. (Though, maybe she actually _could_. It was the first time she had been around him since–) He swallowed. “How long has it been Rose? Tell me, please.”  
  
She took a deep breath and let it out on a sob. “Eighteen months. ‘S been eighteen months.”   



	56. Torchwood

  
Rose clung to the Doctor and cried quietly into his shoulder. He rubbed her back while he murmured too low for them to hear.   
  
Martha’s heart broke for them.  
  
 _Eighteen months._  
  
She couldn’t quite wrap her head around it. Not half an hour ago Rose and she had been sitting together in front of a computer in the silo. Now Rose was suddenly eighteen months older. It was almost inconceivable. Oh, God, how was the Doctor going to handle this? His biggest fear was not having enough time with her, and now eighteen months of Rose’s life had passed in an instant.  
  
Rose stretched up to kiss him and Martha looked away once more to give them privacy. Jack, too, had averted his eyes. She got the feeling that wasn’t something he’d normally do. Oh, of course. Rose must’ve been with Jack the whole time. Not as a Torchwood agent–Rose hated Torchwood too much to join them–but with no one else in the universe who could understand her plight, of course she would’ve sought him out. He had to have known the entire time he was with them… what would happen to Rose… but he hadn’t said a word.  
  
“Why?” Martha asked quietly. Jack glanced over. “Why didn’t you warn us? You could’ve prevented this.” Surely there could’ve been some way. They could’ve landed here sooner or…or…  
  
He shook his head and replied softly, “No, I couldn’t have. When I jumped onto the TARDIS earlier, Rose had been a part of my timeline for over a year. If I’d warned you then that never would’ve happened, and if it never happened, then how could I know to warn you?”  
  
“Paradox,” she murmured.  
  
“Exactly.” He looked at the couple for a moment then cleared his throat loudly. “Rose, I’m sorry. But we’ve got a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it in.”  
  
Rose stepped out of the Doctor’s arms and inhaled shakily. “Right.” Then her back straightened, shoulders squaring, and she lifted her chin. “Right. Okay.” She jogged up the stairs and the Doctor behind her, looking just a bit dazed. “What have you told them so far?”  
  
“Nothing much.” Jack stood up. “We’ve only been here maybe ten minutes.”  
  
“I know.” Rose made a face. “Kind of hard to miss it when something punches a hole in the fabric of reality a few miles away.”  
  
The Doctor blinked. “You what?”  
  
“You know I can feel it when something punches through from the Time Vortex. Remember the Family of Blood?” She made a face. “Those manipulators are like nails trying to force their way through a duvet.”   
  
Rose glanced at Martha standing near the coffee table then did a double take. Her mouth stretched into a wide smile and she crossed the space between them to give her a hug. “Hey, Martha. It’s good to see you.”  
  
Martha wasn’t sure what to say. It had only been half an hour, after all. What did you even say in a situation like this?  
  
Rose seemed to understand because her smile turned somewhat sympathetic before she headed over to the terminal where Jack was. She gave him a hug as well, patting his back firmly. “You’ve been gone a while, Jack. Two months. And everyone’s ticked.”  
  
“You didn’t tell them?”  
  
She shook her head. “No. Besides, they made their own theories.” She jabbed her thumb in the direction of the sign on the glass door to their left.  
  
 _Boldly gone where no man has gone before_  
  
Jack read it over once then snorted. “Where are they, anyway?”  
  
“The Himalayas. We got a call a few weeks back about something falling from the sky not too far from Everest and then a wave of missing locals.”  
  
“But why were we called?” He asked. “There’s no rift out there. That’s more of UNIT’s jurisdiction anyway.”  
  
She shrugged. “I don’t know. And I don’t know how it’s going, either. Haven’t heard from them in five days. No reception, probably. I stayed behind just in case…and here you are.” She smiled at them all for a moment then shook her head quickly. “Plus I’ve been able to keep tabs on Saxon. Oh, by the way, it’s Election Day.”  
  
Jack made a face. “How’s it looking?”  
  
“How do you think?”  
  
“Did you vote?”  
  
Rose nodded. “’S what I was out doing. Just left the place, actually.”  
  
“Wait, Election Day?” Martha blurted out. She shook her head slowly, mind whirling. “But…it’s two days after I met you. That’s so _weird_. We went flying all over the universe, all through time and space, in two days.” Martha laughed weakly. “Suppose I should go vote.”  
  
“In Cardiff?” Rose raised her eyebrows. “Besides, you’ve been gone a year. Do you even remember the candidates?”  
  
“Yeah, Saxon…” she had to think about it for a moment. “Avery.”  
  
“And who would you vote for?”  
  
“Saxon.” Wasn’t it obvious? He was the best choice.  
  
Rose didn’t seem too surprised but she still shook her head sadly. “I think you might want to reconsider that.”  
  
“Who’s Saxon?” the Doctor asked.  
  
Rose sighed walked over to the terminal located under a staircase with a box of leftover pizza on it, set the box aside, sat down in the chair, and started typing. Her fingers were almost a blur as they raced across the keys and on screen window after window began to pop up. The three of them gathered around her. The Doctor placed his hand on her back, and Martha’s be a liar if she said she didn’t notice the way Rose relaxed at the contact.  
  
As she typed, she started explaining. “The Master and I have been here for eighteen months, right? Well, after I got away from him, we saw him a handful of times here in Cardiff. After that he just disappeared. Then he showed up a few months later.”  
  
She brought up a picture of a man in his early thirties with brown hair who was smiling at the camera like he knew an important secret you didn’t. Martha recognized him instantly, of course. _Everyone_ in Britain knew that face. And back in the lab, when she’d heard his voice over the speakers, she _knew_ she’d heard it before. Now she knew where.   
  
The Doctor stiffened. “That’s him.”   
  
“No, but…how can he be the Master?” Martha asked. “He’s been around ages.”  
  
Jack shook his head. “You’re right; he’s got an entire background. Rose, bring up those files.”  
  
Rose nodded and the keys clacked as her fingers flew across them. Another window popped up over Saxon’s picture–a website dedicated to Saxon. Martha recognized it as well as the information. He’d graduated from Cambridge, Rugby Blue, wrote a novel, went into business. He married a woman named Lucy.  
  
“He’s really charismatic, too.” Rose added, mouth puckered like she’d tasted something sour. “When you hear him talking it just sounds… I hate him. I know what he is. But everything he says is just…”  
  
“Good.” Martha supplied.   
  
Rose nodded.  
  
The Doctor looked between them for a moment, brow furrowed. “Eighteen months. He’s always been sort of…hypnotic but this on a massive scale. So how has he managed all this? …When did he first come on the scene?”  
  
“Not long after you deposed Harriet Jones,” Jack said. Rose glanced at the Doctor sharply. “He became Minister in charge of the Archangel Project. He’s been rising through the ranks since. Became Minister of Defense not long after. But he really became prominent when he shot down the Racnoss on Christmas Eve.” He turned to the Doctor, smirking. “Nice job, by the way.”  
  
“Oh, thanks.”  
  
Jack folded his arms. “We’ve been doing what we can to stop him, even went so far as to sic Torchwood One on him. But, somehow, he managed to convince them he was completely human.”  
  
“But he could never get the government to do anything against us!” Rose added gleefully. “Torchwood is far above him. And if he ever tried to come at us directly, well…” she trailed off, gesturing around the room. Martha’s eyes lingered on the room full of weapons across the way.   
  
The Doctor was staring at Rose like someone who’d resigned himself to his fate. “You work for Torchwood.” It wasn’t a question  
  
Rose stiffened for a second and then she nodded. “Yeah, I do.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“At first it was ‘cos I had to. Then I realized that I wanted to.” She twisted in the chair to look at him, chin lifted challengingly, but there was an unmistakable flash of fear there.   
  
The Doctor drew his head back.  
  
“That’s not a problem, is it?” Jack asked coolly. He folded his arms.  
  
The Doctor didn’t look furious like Martha had expected. Maybe a little angry but mostly just upset. He stared at the two of them for a long minute and then he sighed heavily, closing his eyes. “And did she make a difference?”  
  
“Yes. She’s been _fantastic_.”  
  
The Doctor opened his eyes and smiled proudly. “Okay.”  
  
“Okay?” Rose repeated hesitantly…hopefully.  
  
He squeezed her shoulder and nodded. “So, he can’t touch Torchwood. Got it. What else? What else has he been up to? Anything significant?”  
  
Jack and Rose exchanged looks. He shrugged and Rose said, “Well, he got married. Dunno if that’s much, but he did mock you for stooping to mating with a human.”  
  
The Doctor looked startled. “Married? You sure she’s human?”  
  
“She’s got a life, one much more thorough than his.” Jack said. “Saxon’s story has got holes in it–nothing gaping that’d be too noticeable, but little things. Little inconsistencies. Things that don’t quite add up or match. We noticed them because we were looking for them, but there has to have been others who’ve noticed. But no one’s said anything. It’s like they didn’t care.”  
  
“Married,” the Doctor repeated under his breath.   
  
“But Lucy Cole’s not like that.” Rose started typing again and brought up her file. “School records go all the way back. Medical records from infancy, birth certificate checks out in all the systems. Photos, videos, news articles, everything. Lucy’s as human as they come.”  
  
Martha had seen Lucy’s picture almost as often as she’d seen Harold Saxon’s but she still found herself staring at the woman like she’d never seen her before. “But she doesn’t know, does she? About him. I mean, who would stay with him if they knew what he was?”  
  
“You’d be surprised,” the Doctor muttered darkly.  
  
“I’m not sure what she knows.” Rose chewed on the inside of her lip and leaned back in the chair. “I spoke to her not too long ago. Both of them, actually.”  
  
“You _what_?” Jack demanded.  
  
“Saxon came to Cardiff for some last minute campaigning stuff. Lucy was with him. I found them out walking one day. Don’t look at me like that, Jack. We were out in public. I knew he wouldn’t try anything.”  
  
The Doctor folded his arms. “So what happened?”  
  
“I asked Lucy if she knew the truth about her Harry. From what I gathered, I think she knew some of it and her body language didn’t scream for help. So whatever he’s up to, I think she’s in on it. Plus, right around the time she started coming onto the scene, the TARDIS made a couple of trips. Long trips. It…” she struggled to find the words and then simply shook her head. “I figured they were related.”  
  
“What about recently? Has he been making any trips?”  
  
“Not since–” Rose stopped abruptly and exchanged a fearful look with Jack.  
  
“It’s up to you,” he told her quietly.  
  
Rose exhaled slowly and hit the escape key three times. The windows on screen disappeared. She turned around in her chair to face the Doctor. “We…really need to talk.”  
  
“I don’t like the sound of that.” He said.  
  
“You shouldn’t.”  
  
Jack caught Martha’s eye. “I’m gonna go vote. Care to join me?” Though his expression made it clear he really wasn’t asking.  
  
Ok, so it clearly wasn’t good if they didn’t want her knowing. But why couldn’t she? She deserved to know what was going on just as much as the Doctor did. She was involved in this, too. And she had her family to worry about. But the Master…there was no way he could know who she was. He’d never even heard her last name and, really, she could’ve come from anywhere in time. There was no reason to think he’d assume she was from this time period.  
  
“We’ll be back later,” Jack said. “Martha, this way.”  
  
Martha sighed but followed him towards the door Rose had entered through earlier.  
  
Rose watched them go silently. She’d seen the hurt on Martha’s face and felt bad but, really, this wasn’t something she wanted to tell the Doctor with an audience. When Jack and Martha were gone, she got to her feet and faced the Doctor again. Reaching up, she placed her hands on either side of his face and smiled when he leaned into her touch.  
  
“I’ve missed you so much,” she told him. “You have no idea.”  
  
“I think I might, actually.” He said quietly.  
  
“…Yeah, I guess you would.” Rose sighed. “I know you have questions and I promise I’ll do my best to answer them but–but not here.” She glanced at the security camera just over his shoulder. “We have cameras in most of the Hub but there’s a few places that aren’t monitored.”  
  
She let her hands fall from his face and slipped one into his hand. “Come on.”  
  
Rose led the Doctor up the stairs above her terminal to the second level. “When I first got here, Torchwood One was still in power. Jack had severed almost every single tie to them but our security footage went to their archives–something about some clause in the contracts and charters–and they occasionally swooped in if they deemed a case of ours worthy of interest.”  
  
Up to the third floor, then down the first hallway on the right.  
  
“So how did he explain your presence on the security footage?” the Doctor wondered.  
  
“They never asked.” She shrugged. “My guess is by that point they didn’t really care what we did. In any case, they never made the connection or you wouldn’t have been able to pull that trick with my mum that day at Canary Wharf.”  
  
He nodded. “Where are we going?”  
  
She led him past the rest and recreation room and the kitchen. “Jack wouldn’t let me live on my own. He said that it was too dangerous for me to be out there in some flat where anyone could sneak in at any time they wanted. I didn’t like it but I knew he was right.”  
  
“So…you live here?” he guessed.  
  
“Mmhmm. There’s a few rooms in this place that aren’t in use. Wouldn’t really call most of ‘em rooms, though. More like nooks or cupboards.”  
  
She stopped in the middle of the hallway. On either side of them were two steel doors labeled with the Torchwood logo and big yellow letters: WARNING: HIGHLY DANGEROUS OBJECTS WITHIN. Beside each door was a simple thumb print scanner. Rose placed hers on the scanner on the left side. It beeped once and the door hissed as it unlocked. Rose pulled the door open wide enough for them to slip in, motioning the Doctor in first, and pulled the door shut behind them.  
  
She hit the light switch and the lights flickered on and she heard the Doctor’s breath catch in his throat.  
  
Her room wasn’t much. It had been just another storage cupboard until she had moved in. Well, a storage cupboard for highly dangerous alien artifacts, but those were long gone. Still, there wasn’t much room to begin with. She had a single sized bed (TARDIS blue duvet), a small wardrobe, a dresser with a mirror bolted to the wall above it, and a table next to her bed with a pink and yellow lamp on top. The walls were painted the same color as the TARDIS’s coral struts. They’d managed to find a rug that felt like the carpet in her room on the TARDIS and even though it was lime green, they’d bought three of them to cover all the remaining empty floor space. There was just enough room for her to move around between all the furniture, but no more than that.  
  
It was cleaner than her room on the TARDIS had been, too. Such a small space had to be kept tidy, because even a few things out of place could make the whole room look a mess. Not that anyone else ever came in here. Tosh, Gwen, Owen, and Ianto knew for a fact she lived in the Hub but they’d only just learned where. Jack had removed the only two cameras in the area so if the CCTV footage was hacked, there would be no record of where her room was. Jack was the only other person who knew. He’d helped her make it what it was. Not a home. But it was a place she could live.  
  
“You can sit down if you want,” she offered, unzipping her jacket.   
  
The Doctor looked around the room, taking in everything, from the lime green rugs to the makeup scattered across her dresser. “Not much a color scheme,” he finally said.  
  
Rose laughed and nudged him with her shoulder. “Shut up.”  
  
He grinned playfully, shucking his jacket, tossed it on the bedpost, then sat down on the edge of the bed.  
  
She set her jacket over his. She heard him inhale sharply and she realized the gun she had holstered under her left arm was suddenly visible. He must’ve managed to avoid touching it earlier when he’d been holding her. That or he’d felt it but simply hadn’t paid any mind to it. She carefully avoided his gaze as she removed the holster and hung it from the hook on the side of her wardrobe.  
  
“You carry a gun now?” he asked flatly.   
  
“Yes. I tried never to use it at in the field at first, but then Tosh nearly got killed because I didn’t.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “I have to carry it with me while on missions but I only wanted to use it as a last resort. So I learned how to fight.”  
  
“Fight?”  
  
“Hand to hand combat,” she clarified. “Mostly self defense, but some offensive fighting, too. Been formally training and Jack’s been giving me lessons as well. He knows a lot more than I thought he did and, well, can’t help but using some of that in class. My instructors like to tease that I was some sort of ninja in a past life.” She sank down beside him on the bed. “So I usually just keep my gun under my jacket. It tends to make people more trusting when they don’t see a piece on you.”  
  
“So what is it you do on the team?”  
  
“Translations, mostly.”  
  
He arched one eyebrow. “Rose, you’re monolingual.”  
  
“Hey, I used to be pretty good at French, y’know. Was gonna sit an A-level for it. But it doesn’t matter ‘cos I’ve got the TARDIS. The translator still works for me, even now. I’m usually busy translating things–objects, transmissions, papers–and sometimes we’ll have a human or an alien in here that doesn’t speak a word of English. I translate for them. When I think about how disastrous it might’ve been without me there…” she shuddered. “I’ve saved so many lives just by talking. …That’s your job, isn’t it?”  
  
The Doctor smiled proudly but it didn’t quite meet his eyes. “How many times have you come up with a solution I never would’ve even thought of? And here you are now, defending the Earth, helping people, like you always have. I am so proud of you.”  
  
She searched his gaze for a moment. “Then what’s wrong?” she murmured.  
  
His eyes lingered on her face for a moment before flicking down to her chest. He reached out and slid his hand beneath her TARDIS key–still warm, even now–and then he fingered her necklace. The same one he’d given her on the flower planet just before they’d been separated. He seemed to struggle with something for a moment before he swallowed. “I gave this to you yesterday.”  
  
Oh. Rose shook her head sadly.  
  
He fingered a spot on her neck just above the collar of her shirt. She remembered from their weeks together, so long ago, that he’d always favored kissing that spot on her neck. “I made love to you this morning.”  
  
She shook her head again.   
  
He ignored her. “You told me to pick out a jacket so I went into your closet and brought out a brown one. You said you’d never seen it before and it didn’t match your outfit anyway. So I suggested you change outfits. ‘To what?’ you asked. And so I cobbled together that outfit together for you and the TARDIS brought out pink Chucks.” His lips twitched towards a smile before curling down. His eyes seemed a bit more moist than normal. “You laughed and laughed when you realized what I’d done but you put it on anyway.”   
  
Rose looked at her wardrobe thoughtfully then leaned down and pulled her shoes off. She walked over to the wardrobe and, kneeling down, rummaged through the shoes she had down there. It took her a second to locate the bright pink converse underneath her other shoes. She kept her back to him as she wrestled them onto her feet without untying them. They were really loose so it wasn’t quite as difficult as it should’ve been. When she was done she stood up and turned, wiggling her feet around for him to see.  
  
The Doctor tried to smile and only managed to look slightly less miserable.   
  
She took a step towards him and he reached out, pulling her across the remaining two feet to the edge of the bed, to stand between his legs. He leaned forward and pressed his face into her stomach. She sighed quietly, running her fingers through his hair.  
  
He croaked something she couldn’t make out.  
  
“What?”  
  
He raised his head. “Ninety-four minutes,” he murmured. The Doctor slid his arms up her body as he stood, and pulled her tightly against him. “That’s how long it’s been. Ninety-four minutes and thirty-eight seconds ago, I told you to stay in the lab and you told me to be careful. And now here you are, a year and a half later. You’ve grown up. You’ve changed. You’re not the same woman I woke up this morning with.” She still didn’t say anything so he went on. “And I don’t know who you are anymore. I don’t know the woman you’ve become and I’ll never know what you went through to get to where you are now.”  
  
“I could tell you,” she whispered.   
  
“And I could tell you about all my past lives but it wouldn’t be the same as if you’d lived through them with me.”   
  
He had a point. “You’re right.” She framed his face with her hands. “You’re right; I’m not that same person. But I’m still Rose. And I still love you.”   
  
He tried to smile again, failed. “Oh, Rose…I never doubted that. Not for a second. But I–I’m so old and your life is going to end long before mine. I’ve only got a short time with you before you’re gone and he–he took…he _took_ some of that from me. He stole a year and a half of your life from me and no matter what, I can never get it back.” He turned his head and kissed the palm of her right hand, reaching up to cradle her hand with his. “How many times were you hurt because I wasn’t there to help you? How many times did you wake up from nightmares because I wasn’t there to keep them away?”  
  
 _Too often_ , she thought but he didn’t need to know. She hadn’t expected him to react this way. She’d expected anger, sadness, and him to try and comfort her. But he was mourning.   
  
The Doctor closed the remaining distance between them and kissed her tenderly. Lips sliding together, her hand stroking his temple, and she felt his mind brush against hers. He used to do that, she remembered, but she’d never been this aware of it before.  
  
It was that thought that caused her to pull away. If he got too close to her mind he might see too much too soon. She had to break this to him carefully. “Doctor, there’s something I need to tell you.”   
  
“I suspected as much.”   
  
She looked down, suddenly unable to meet his eyes any longer. How was she supposed to ease him into something like this?   
  
“What is it?”  
  
“It’s the TARDIS,” she mumbled.   
  
He stilled. She wasn’t even sure he was still breathing.   
  
“Can you feel her?”   
  
“Yes,” he said slowly. “But it’s strange.”  
  
“Like she’s not entirely there?”  
  
“Mmhmm.”   
  
“Anything else?”  
  
The Doctor shook his head. “What’s going on, Rose?”  
  
“The Master did something to the TARDIS. I’m not sure what, but…it was…it was…” She trailed off with a shudder as she recalled the pain. The Doctor sat down on the bed, tugging her with him, and she scooted back against the wall, pulling her knees to her chest. He followed her, leaning against the wall, and sat with his legs outstretched. “At first, the Master would take trips in the TARDIS. I couldn’t be sure, but it felt like he was going the same distance each time.”  
  
“He was. I locked the coordinates as you were dematerializing. He can only travel between the Earth here and now and the year one hundred trillion.”  
  
She nodded slowly. “He went a bunch of times at the beginning. Dunno why. Then the trips got fewer and farther in between. Then there was this one day, I remember, a whole bunch of trips. One after the other, back and forth, and back and forth, it was horrible. I got so sick. Then after that day there were a few more and then they stopped.”  
  
“And then what happened?”   
  
Rose licked her lips slowly. “Pain. At first it was just…little phantom pains all over my body. Nowhere particular. They weren’t that bad at first. But then they just…got worse. They’d come out of nowhere an’ sometimes I’d be totally incapacitated. I started blacking out, too. Sometimes I’d wake up and no time had passed. Another time I didn’t wake up for over an hour. That one was the worst. Woke up in hospital.” She swallowed and licked her lips again. “That was November. And then one day, just before Christmas, it–it was–it hurt so _bad_. Like nothing in my life. It was like I was being ripped open and eaten from the inside out. And the TARDIS was screaming in my head. I was so scared.  
  
“I remember hearin’ Owen say I was gonna die from the stress on my body. And then I thought about you, and how I wasn’t ever gonna see you again. Then that’s where things get fuzzy. I remember the singing and all this golden light and so _much_ in my mind. But I still to this day can’t tell you what I did during that time. Next thing I knew, I was waking up and I felt fine. Completely fine. But my bond to the TARDIS was… it went from a steel pole to a shoelace and I couldn’t feel her on the other end. She must’ve weakened it to save me.”  
  
When she was finished, Rose glanced at the Doctor. He had his eyes shut and his jaw was tight. He breathed slowly, deeply, like he was asleep. He said nothing for a long time. Rose stared at herself in the mirror across the room. She’d done that many times since she’d moved in here. It helped her to drift and think. Seeing the Doctor’s reflection next to hers, however, warmed her heart. Another reminder that he was really here. They were finally together.  
  
“I can feel the TARDIS.” The Doctor said. “She’s there but her presence is weak. She won’t respond.” He opened his eyes and looked at her reflection in the mirror. “You said you can’t feel her anymore?”  
  
“No. I can’t even feel the bond unless I go looking for it. It’s so small. And I can’t hear her singing anymore. Not even when I–y’know. ‘Cos when we went into that secret underground base Torchwood One had, the one with the Huons, we activated some of them. My eyes glowed, I felt all tingly, but there was no song. She’s just gone–”  
  
“Silent,” he finished. “This has only ever happened twice. Both times she was too focused on some other task. If the last thing you felt from her was pain then that can only mean she’s been damaged. Torn apart, perhaps, but she’s still alive.”  
  
“It was the Master’s fault. I know that much.”   
  
He exhaled through slowly through his teeth. “First you. Now the TARDIS. And we still don’t even know what his plan is.”   
  
“Nor us.” she sighed. “And we’ve been trying for over a year.”  
  
The Doctor was silent for another minute. Then he reached over and stroked her bare forearm with the tips of his fingers, slowly, cautiously, like he was afraid she would run from him. She smiled and rested her head on his shoulder. She wanted to tell him the rest but she was afraid to overwhelm him. So much had happened for him in the last few hours. She’d had months and months get used to these things. Time Lord or not, he needed a chance to process everything he’d learned today before she piled on all the stuff going on with her.   
  
He tilted his head down to look into her eyes. “I love you,” he murmured.  
  
Tears welled in her eyes and she giggled once. She’d been waiting months to hear him say those three words again. And they still caused her heart to flutter in her chest, her tummy to tingle, and made her want to jump around and shout gleefully to the sky.  
  
“Say it again.”  
  
He smiled. “I love you, Rose Tyler.”   
  
She giggled again, trying to blink away the tears, but one of them escaped and dripped down her cheek. The Doctor twisted, folding his legs, out to the side. He wiped the tears away with his thumbs and smiled. He searched her face intently for a moment, rubbing this thumb across the apple of her cheek. “Are you alright?” he asked.   
  
Rose didn’t have to think about it because for the first time in a long time, she really, truly was.


	57. Hidden Away

  
Jack and Martha came back around four in the afternoon. Rose and the Doctor were alerted to their presence by a tiny buzzer in Rose’s room that went off when either the hidden elevator was activated, or the vault door opened.   
  
Despite how much they wanted to stay in their own little world for a while longer, Rose knew Jack’s return signified the end of the time alone that he’d granted them. They’d been waiting months for the information the Doctor could provide about the Master and as much as it pained her to return her thoughts to the Master and the shadow he’d cast over their lives, she knew this was more important than having a cuddle with the Doctor. So they headed back down into the central Hub and spent the next two hours going over the Saxon files in the conference room. They contained records of everything Saxon had done publically, and some information they had collected via their government contacts. Rose and Jack knew the files backwards and forwards, and they were hoping the Doctor could provide some insight. Meanwhile, Jack had recruited Martha to help him sort through some of the reports written in his absence. Rose, happy to be able to take a break from work, went to make tea.  
  
“‘B L-S reported Saxon approached him for information personally.’ What’s this mean?” the Doctor asked, looking up from a piece of paper he was reading. “Who’s B L-S?”  
  
“Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart,” Rose answered calmly from behind her cup of tea. “I believe you’re acquainted.”   
  
The paper slipped from his fingers. The silence brought Martha and Jack out of their work and they looked up curiously. Rose set her mug down and leaned back in her chair, waiting for the Doctor to do something other than gawk at her.   
  
“Alistair?” he finally managed to get out, disbelief and nostalgia coloring his features.   
  
“Mmm.” Rose nodded. “Nice man.”   
  
The Doctor’s lips quirked upwards at that. “B-but how did you even find him?” he asked.   
  
“I’ve been in contact with him before.” Jack explained. “So I went with her when she first met him. Introductions and all that. He tried to throw us out of his house once he recognized me, but Doris wouldn’t have any of it.”  
  
“He was very kind once I explained who I was to you, and what was going on.” Rose continued. “He agreed to keep his eyes open for us. And told me if I ever wanted a more respectable job that he could easily find me a place in UNIT.” She smiled.   
  
The Doctor took another deep breath and let it out slowly. He picked up the piece of paper he’d been holding and continued reading.  
  
Around six, Jack ordered pizza. When it was almost time for the delivery person to arrive, Rose headed up to the welcome center to collect it, and made the Doctor come with her. He left behind the files and followed her to the lift without protest which was a relief. She knew he was itching to explore Torchwood and would slip away from Jack given half the chance, but he seemed perfectly content to stay near her. He held her hand as they rode up the lift to the front desk. She pressed the button to open the door to the welcome room, and then ushered him through quickly.   
  
His eyebrows shot up in surprise when he realized the door was disguised as a wall when closed, and then he laughed. “Well, I’ll give them points for that,” he said then looked around the room. “This as well. Looks like a tourist office.”  
  
“It is. It’s been closed since the team left.” Rose leaned against the counter. “But normally Ianto is stationed up here when he’s not needed down in the Hub. Before that, the team members took turns monitoring the desk. It’s a good cover.”  
  
“Did you ever work here?”  
  
She nodded her head. “Loads. It was very dull at first, so I started to bring stuff to translate with me when I could. The others were very happy that I started volunteering to work up here often so that they didn’t have to. Then Ianto came along and he took over this job.”  
  
The Doctor rummaged through the shelves of magazines and brochures with mild interest. Occasionally he would pick up one and flip through it then return it to the shelf. She watched him the entire time. She liked to pretend that she remembered everything about him but the truth was, there were little things she had forgotten. So she took this opportunity to relearn the way his fingers would brush across the surfaces of the paper as he browsed, the way he stood when he was at ease, the way he smiled when he realized she was watching him.   
  
The Doctor set down the magazine he was holding and crossed the space between them. He ducked his head and pressed his lips to hers, sliding his arms around her waist. He kissed her slowly, leisurely, like he had all the time in the world. Then he drew back and pressed a quick kiss to the tip of her nose, the space between her eyes, and the top of her head.  
  
“Rose,” he said into her hair.   
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“We’re waiting for a pizza delivery.”  
  
“That we are.”  
  
“I’ve never had a pizza delivery before. Always gone and got it right from the shop. Never had a place to have delivered _to_.” He made a face. “Could you imagine having a pizza delivered to the TARDIS?”  
  
Rose laughed. “They wouldn’t even be able to see the TARDIS.”  
  
“Even if they could, what would we put as the address?”  
  
“The big blue box on the corner of… Whatever Street.”  
  
He cocked his head to the side. “I suppose. But could you imagine the face of the poor delivery boy when he realized he was actually delivering to a blue box?”  
  
She laughed again. “How about his face when we actually open the door?”  
  
He laughed, too. “We should do that. As soon as we get the TARDIS back, we’ll set her down on a street corner and order pizza.”  
  
Rose smiled and leaned her head on his shoulder. “It’s a date.”  
  
A few minutes later, a buzzer went off in the back of the room. “ _Rose! Pizza!_ ” a girl’s voice called through an unseen speaker. Rose reluctantly stepped out of the Doctor’s arms and went to open the door for the delivery girl.   
  
She was short, the top of her head barely coming up to Rose’s eyes, and her dark hair was pulled up in a firm ponytail. The Doctor approached her just as Rose was handing over the money. The delivery girl blinked at him in surprise. “Who’s this?” she asked Rose in a thick Welsh accent. “Didya hire someone new?”  
  
“No, ah. Stacey, this is the Doctor.”  
  
Stacey frowned at him for a second and then her eyes widened. “OH! Ooooooh! _That_ Doctor!” She beamed at him. “It’s about time you came ‘round, mate. She’s been missin’ you.”  
  
The Doctor smiled. “I came as soon as I could. Here, let me take those.” He held out his arms for the pizza.   
  
“A year’s a long time,” she told him as she unzipped the carrying bag and handed him the pizza boxes, four in total. “So, lot of pizza for just two. Is Jack back yet?”  
  
“Yep,” Rose said. “Arrived today with the Doctor. And another friend of ours.”  
  
“And the others?”  
  
“Nah. They’re all still away. But they’ll be back soon.”   
  
“Right.” Stacey tucked the bag under her arm. “Well, hopefully when they get back you’ll finally be able to eat something other than pizza.”  
  
“I had a pot pie the other night,” Rose informed her primly.  
  
“That you heated up in the microwave.”  
  
Rose pressed her lips together for a moment. “So what?” she mumbled.  
  
Stacey laughed. “Enjoy your pizza.”  
  


~*~

  
  
Martha started yawning not long after dinner was over. It had been a long, hectic day after all, and she’d jumped through time and space without a capsule two consecutive times. Jack suggested they all get some sleep, and told Rose to go find a blanket and pillow for Martha.  
  
“We’re sleeping here?” Martha asked incredulously.   
  
“Well, yeah.” Rose replied.   
  
“Why? Don’t you have a flat or something?”  
  
Jack and Rose glanced at each other. “No,” Jack said. “We don’t. We live here.”  
  
“Here?” Martha looked around the Hub. “You live _here_? I mean I know you’ve got a kitchen but you’ve got rooms and showers too?”  
  
Jack sighed. “It’s easier this way. I’m always here if something happens.” He glanced at Rose again. “And she doesn’t have to worry about a homicidal alien, or one of his friends sneaking into her room at night.”  
  
Martha’s face tightened and Rose gritted her teeth at the sadness she saw in her old friend’s eyes. Rose did not need her sympathy. Sure, she had not been happy about this arrangement in the beginning, but she had grown to appreciate it, even like it. Sometimes it felt like the walls were closing in on her and when that happened she would go stay with Tosh or Gwen for the night. She did not have any delusions about her situation–she knew damn well she was using the Hub as a hiding place–but it was better than the alternative.  
  
They got Martha settled onto the couch and Rose brought her a t-shirt and a pair of shorts to sleep in. Jack retreated into his office, where his room was located beneath a manhole in the floor. Rose flipped off as many of the lights and machines as she could so Martha would be able to sleep. Then she led the Doctor up to her room behind the steel door.  
  
The first thing he did when she shut the door was press her up against it and kiss her. She was startled by his abruptness but she returned his kiss with equal fervor. He pulled back and pressed his face into her neck, sliding his arms around her.   
  
She felt him shudder once. “Hey,” she murmured, running her hands up and down his back. “What’s wrong?”  
  
The Doctor did not answer her at first. Instead, he pressed gentle, closed-mouth kisses onto the skin of her neck. She ran her fingers through his hair and kissed the top of his ear. He raised his head from her neck and swallowed, and then backed away from the door towards the bed, pulling her with him. He did not sit down, though, but stood there with her in his arms for another moment.  
  
“I just…I keep thinking about it. You’ve been down here like a rat hiding in the sewer.”  
  
She wrinkled her nose. “Really? Of all the analogies you could’ve–”  
  
“Rose, please,” he interrupted. “Let me finish. … I remember what you were like when we first started travelling. You had been so restricted all your life and suddenly you had the entire universe at your feet. You were even more eager than I was to explore and you radiated life and happiness. Neither of us wanted to stay still, trapped within one place, one _time_. Now you’re living in a tiny room underground. And it’s all because you can’t risk living in a proper flat or home because you could get killed or worse. And it’s my fault.”  
  
“No, it’s–”  
  
“The Master’s my responsibility. He’s always been. If I’d just…. If I’d gotten there just a bit sooner, if I’d run just a bit faster, then he wouldn’t have taken you. You’d be out there in the stars, sleeping inside a ship that loves you, in a room that’s wide enough to breathe in, and you wouldn’t have to worry about a madman wanting to kill you and take over the world.”  
  
“It’s not your fault,” she told him empathetically. “I don’t blame you one bit.”  
  
“Rose I–” He took a deep breath and let it out. “In the Saxon files…there was a copy of a medical report written by Dr. Owen Harper in November, 2006. Patient’s name: Rose Tyler.”  
  
Horror flashed through her mind. _I told him to take it out of there._  
  
“‘Multiple shallow lacerations and abrasions on the face, torso, and limbs. Multiple deep lacerations in the arms and front of the torso requiring stitches,’” he recited. “‘Heavy bruising on the face, upper arms, torso, and legs. Several distinctly shaped like human hands.’”  
  
“Stop it.”  
  
“‘One fractured rib on the left side. Fracture in the left ulna bone. Both wrists sprained.’”   
  
“Stop it.”  
  
“Concussion. Signs of heavy–’”  
  
“THAT’S ENOUGH!” She shouted, jerking out of his grip, and he finally fell silent. She took a deep breath and exhaled through her teeth. “I told you those injuries healed months ago.”  
  
“He did that to you.” He hissed. “What else did he do?”  
  
“Nothing,” she promised. “He didn’t do anything but hit me. The TARDIS helped me get out of the console room as we were flying, and she hid me until he went deeper into the ship. Then she helped me get out. I promise.”  
  
“So he–he didn’t…”  
  
“No.” She put her hands on his cheeks.  
  
The Doctor sagged in relief and rested his forehead against hers, covering her hands with his. “After he took you and before you showed up in the Hub, the entire time I wondered what he’d done to you. You were fine when I saw you so it just… and then, reading the report, I…”   
  
“It’s okay.” Rose kissed him softly. “It’s okay. I’m okay. Look at me.” She waited until he opened his eyes. “It was a long time ago.” She ran her fingers through his hair again, nails scraping against his scalp. “You’re here now and I’m okay. Are we?”  
  
He stared at her for another few seconds. “Yeah. We are.” He leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers once, twice, three times, slow and tender. She smiled around his lips and pulled him down to the bed.   
  


~*~

  
  
In his office, Jack was staring desolately at the screen of his computer, which was displaying a live feed of the election results. It was official: Saxon had won. The Master was now Prime Minister of Great Britain. He could go no higher. This had to be what he had been aiming for since the beginning. So now what would he do? What was he planning?   
  
Jack rolled his eyes. He had been asking himself these questions for months. He did not have the answers any of those times, either.   
  
He wondered if he should go tell the Doctor, but then he immediately decided against it. Rose had not seen the Doctor in over a year, and he knew _exactly_ what they were up to right about know. If he barged in on them even for something like this, she would kill him. Probably literally. No, this news could wait until morning. He would let them have this night to themselves.   
  
Through his blinds, he could see Martha stretched out on the couch, sound asleep. No, he would not wake her, either.   
  
Jack sighed and switched off the computer. He drummed his fingers on his desk and stared off into space. The Doctor had not been able to add very much insight. He had looked through everything, but he had only been able to describe tactics the Master had used in the past that were similar to ones in their files. The hypnosis thing the Master could do, though, that explained a lot. Like how he had managed to slip right out of Torchwood One’s grasp.   
  
He looked down at his phone.   
  
It would be easier if he had his team with him. They were going to be furious with him, but they would have to get over it quickly, especially with the world at stake. The timing of their departure worried him. Why had they specifically been requested to the Himalayas? He picked it up and dialed Gwen’s number. It went straight to voicemail. He sighed and tried Tosh’s. Same thing. Owen’s as well. Ianto’s too. He considered leaving a message for Ianto but decided against it. With a sigh, the receiver was returned to its place.  
  
Looking around his office once more, he decided there was nothing else he could do. Jack pushed his chair away from the desk, rising to his feet. He pulled the manhole cover up, and swung one leg over, then the other, and descended into his room.   
  


~*~

  
  
Rose drifted slowly into awareness. Before she was even fully conscious, some part of her instinctively knew that there was no reason to hurry up and wake. There was nothing she had to worry about. She was warm, secure, and the soft pressure on her head was very soothing. She felt peaceful. Safe. That was new. She had not felt either safe or at peace since…  
  
She shifted just a bit and became aware that she was pressed against something firm and cool. Her pillow was not fluffy like she was used to. And actually, that soft pressure on her head felt a lot like–  
  
She was suddenly wide-awake. Inhaling through her nose, she raised her head and found herself staring into a pair of familiar brown eyes. The Doctor, head propped up on a pillow against her headboard, smiled at her affectionately.   
  
“Good morning, love,” he murmured.   
  
Tears welled in her eyes, spilling over onto her cheeks. He looked concerned until she laughed breathlessly and he realized her tears were not of sadness. He moved his hand from her hair to her face, wiping the tears away.   
  
“Good morning,” she whispered. She tilted her head and kissed his fingers then lowered her head to his chest, pressing her ear over his heart.  
  
 _Tha-tha-thump-thump. Tha-tha-thump-thump._  
  
Just like hers, he had said long ago, but doubled.  
  
Rose smiled at him again, and then she let her eyes slip shut and just listened. His fingers resumed playing with her hair. A moment later she felt his mind brush against hers, calm and comforting. His mental presence was the same shade of yellow the TARDIS used to express delight. She peeked one eye open and saw that his were closed. His mind brushed along hers again, and again, repeatedly, like a caress.   
  
That was new. Or, was it? Maybe he had been doing it for a while, but she had not been able to tell before now. She was not an expert on telepathy, but she had a feeling he was giving her the telepathic equivalent of a nuzzle.  
  
She closed her eyes again.  
  
Telepathy. That was one of the first things she had discovered. Before that day in December her communication with species like the Weevils had been limited to what words were translatable from their animalistic tongue. Then, suddenly, she was able to hone in on their species’ telepathic field and access it. The results had been…mixed. But the process had been easy. Weevils were horribly primitive, barely sentient.   
  
Time Lords, however, were not. She had wondered ever since she had discovered this power if she would be able to communicate telepathically with the Doctor. He had told her before that it was empty in his head without other Time Lords. How amazing would it be if she could learn to fill some of that space so he would not be alone anymore? But even if she could manage access to their species’ telepathic, field she doubted it would be a good idea to be wandering around in there, considering there was a psychotic Time Lord around.   
  
But she could attempt to communicate with the Doctor, specifically. Getting directly into his mind would be impossible for her. She had no formal training and his mind was heavily guarded. But she could mirror his gesture since he wasn’t actually going into her mind with it. It was easiest if she simply treated her mind as another limb. She stretched it out, seeking the Doctor’s mind. When his mind brushed along hers again, she pushed against his touch.  
  
The Doctor’s reaction was immediate. His eyes flew open as his entire body jolted like he had been shocked. She was nearly tossed into the wall. “What in the name of Rassilon’s–” He stared at her in utter disbelief for a split second…and then his mind nudged against hers. Gentle, probing, not invasive, though she was sure he could get into her mind with ease.  
  
Rose smiled and nudged back.  
  
The air rushed out of him in a whoosh. His shock turned to awe and his fingers slid down to her temples. Then he seemed to realize what he was doing and he pulled his hand back. “How are you doing that?” he asked.  
  
She shook her head.   
  
“Do it again,” the Doctor ordered. When she did he exhaled a laugh, eyes bright and brimming with emotion. He relaxed his fingers and cupped her cheek with his hand. “On Gallifrey, when Tots were first learning to use their telepathy to communicate one on one, older members of the Chapters were assigned to help them. The first thing we learned was how to inform another we wanted to speak to them.” He nudged her mind again. “Like that. It’s like knocking on a door. It’s polite to rap gently or use the knocker. You only pound hard and loud when you’re angry or need to get attention immediately.”  
  
Rose smiled. “So how did I do?”  
  
“You’re clumsy, a bit too broad with the contact, and too forceful. You just need more control.” He laughed again, fingers tightening on her cheek. His mirth soon faded, however, leaving him worried. “But you shouldn’t be able to do that at all. When did you learn to do this?”  
  
“I didn’t. Just realized I could one day in December.”  
  
The significance was not lost on him. She felt him tense and he swallowed. “Can I…?” He slid his fingers to her temples. She nodded and shifted around so he could reach easier. He pressed the tips of his fingers against her temples just _so_ , and her skin tingled for a brief second before his mind slipped into hers.   
  
Warmth flooded through her body, and her eyes closed. He did not make it far though, before he hit the mental equivalent of a brick wall.   
  
_Glad to see your defenses are in place. Do you mind if I go through them? Or do you want to lift them yourself?_  
  
She had never tried to lift those barriers that he had placed around her mind on her own before. She had never had the capacity to do so, and once she realized she had become telepathic, she had figured it would just be safer this way.   
  
_Don’t worry,_ he soothed, sensing her unease. _I’ll let you do it yourself._  
  
 _You better do it. I don’t know how_ , she replied.  
  
 _Okay._   
  
A moment later, the Doctor’s mind slid through her defenses, no forceful pushing, no shattering, no pain. He simply passed through like they were not there. She sighed shakily. Even though this was not the first time he had been in her mind this way, back then she had been unable to appreciate it fully. His presence was cool, like skin that she could feel against her body, but not unpleasantly so. His mind drifted through hers, searching. She did her best to direct him to the place where her mental link to the TARDIS used to be, where the power was now located.   
  
It had been there since the day of all that pain, after she had woken up from that haze of which she had almost no memory. It was like an outside presence in a way, like the TARDIS, except it felt like it belonged there. Like it was a part of her. She had always pictured it as a great ball of golden light, and it made her feel warm every time she delved into it. She had told Jack and the others that she had good control over it, but really, she had only scratched the surface of it so far. She was afraid of what would happen if she went in too deep.  
  
“Oh…” he whispered then added mentally, _That’s beautiful._  
  
He brushed along the power and her entire body tingled deliciously at the familiar presence. _Doctor, mine, safe, love,_ that instinct whispered–the same instinct that hissed at her to be wary of Jack because of what he was. She did not know where it came from, but it had never lied to her.   
  
Then he tried to ‘touch’ it; a single, thin probe at the edge, very precise, very gentle, not attempting to break through, just testing. She recognized the intellectual curiosity and good intentions behind it–he just wanted to understand, he did not want to hurt her, or violate it–but that did not matter. He was trying to get in and he was _not allowed in no one was allowed in no wrong don’t belong will only hurt us will separate us out out out OUT!_  
  
Her muscles stiffened, liquid fire rushed through her veins, and with a roar of, “NO!” from both her mind and mouth, her head jerked away from his touch, wrenching him quite abruptly from her mind. In a movement of uncoordinated franticness, she shoved away from him, knocking the covers away from her body, until her back hit the wall. She did not stop there, but slid away from him until she reached the end of the bed.  
  
The Doctor sat up, his leg shifting underneath the duvet near her. She jumped an inch off of the bed, and wedged herself in the corner between the bedpost and the wall the moment she landed. She huddled there, naked, legs pulled up to her chest defensively, and her eyes gleamed dangerously behind a curtain of messy blonde hair.   
  
To say he was shocked by her reaction was a bit of an understatement. He carefully pulled his legs away from her, bending them so his heel was tucked against his thigh. She tracked their movement with her eyes and once she seemed sure he was not going to move them again, her eyes locked with his once more. He resisted the urge to shiver. It had been a long time since he had felt threatened just by looking into someone’s eyes–the fact that they were Rose’s made it even worse. She looked pretty dangerous just sitting there. Her eyes were the shade of vibrant gold they turned when she was really worked up–he had only ever seen it once during their night in Hooverville.  
  
For Rose to rate his gentle probing on the same level as a Dalek attack–well, it hurt.  
  
“Rose,” he murmured. “It’s alright.”  
  
Her glare did not waver.  
  
Was that even Rose? Well, obviously it was. He knew Rose intimately, and not just in the physical sense. There had been no mistaking that he was in her mind. But Rose was not entirely in control of her own actions, at least not consciously. That–that thing in her mind, whatever it was, it was powerful, and it had direct influence over her body. It had hummed in delight when he had first caressed it, and there was something dearly familiar about it. But when he had tried to get a better look at it, it had reacted defensively in the only way it could short of actually hurting him: forcibly severing contact.   
  
He had to be careful about this. Rose had never liked behind cornered, and she had been trained to fight since the last time he had seen her in one of those situations. He was not entirely sure that she would not attempt to prevent him from following before making her escape.   
  
“You know I would never, ever hurt you.” He went on soothingly, resisting the urge to reach out with his mind to calm her. “You showed me where it was, didn’t you want me to look at it?”  
  
She did not answer.   
  
“I won’t do it again,” he promised. “Please–please stop looking at me like that.”  
  
A full sixty seconds passed in silence as they stared at each other. She seemed to be slowly calming down but she made no move towards him. Finally, the Doctor sighed and dropped his gaze, debating whether or not he should just leave the room.   
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
He looked back up.  
  
Her eyes had faded back to normal and without the glow, she no longer looked like a cornered animal. She looked like a terrified girl. “I didn’t mean to freak out like that.”   
  
“You have nothing to apologize for.” the Doctor assured her. “I should’ve asked.”  
  
“I would’ve said yes.”  
  
His eyebrows shot towards his hairline. If that was the case then his assumptions had been correct, and any thorough investigation of whatever that thing was in her mind would be impossible. It did not want him poking around inside, and it would make sure he could not.   
  
Rose unfolded her body from the tense ball and crawled up the bed. She sat cross-legged in front of him and leaned her head forward invitingly. The Doctor hesitated before raising his fingers to her temples and then eased back into her mind. Their eyes slipped shut. She felt him heading directly for that ball of power again and when he arrived, he skirted around the edges of it, only brushing, never quite touching.  
  
 _I’m going to try to try to have a look. If you want me to stop just say so and I will. You don’t have to run.  
  
Okay. _  
  
Rose took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She pressed her lips together, and braced herself for the panic. Since it would not be hitting her by surprise this time, maybe she would be able to keep herself from bolting.  
  
The Doctor pressed against the power, and Rose’s entire body seized up. _No no no get out get out will hurt us will separate–  
  
No, _ she argued and forced herself to stay still. _It’s the Doctor. He won’t hurt me._  
  
After five seconds, Rose was shaking with the effort to hold still. Her hand shot up, curling around his wrist, and her nails dug into his skin. The Doctor withdrew from it immediately. That alone was enough for her to be able to uncurl her fingers from around his wrist. She rubbed the tiny dents in his skin with the tips of her fingers apologetically.   
  
He lowered his fingers from her temples and she opened her eyes to find him staring at her.   
  
“What is it?” she asked.  
  
“I’m not entirely sure, I couldn’t get a good enough look, but it felt like…” He struggled with words for a moment, opening his mouth only to shut it again. “Rose, are you sure the TARDIS weakened your bond that day? Because I think that you’ve got a piece of the TARDIS consciousness nestled in the back of your mind.”  
  
Rose sat up straighter, surprised, but at the same time, not at all. “That…would explain a lot of things,” she murmured.   
  
He watched her carefully. “Not her entire consciousness, not even half of it, actually, or you’d be dead.” He stroked his fingers across her temples. “I’ll have to ask Jack what he remembers about that day, but I think the part of her that is connected to you is tucked away in your mind. That’d be why you can’t feel her on the other end of that bond–it’s not even your bond–it’s what’s linking that piece of her consciousness to the rest of it.”  
  
“But where’s the rest of it? You said you can’t feel her properly either.”  
  
He pursed his lips. “Well, I’d know immediately if I had a piece of her consciousness tucked away in my mind. My guess is she’s shielding herself from me on purpose. Or maybe she’s shielding herself from everybody, and she doesn’t have enough strength to make an exception for me.”  
  
“But why did she keep forcing you out?” Rose asked.  
  
“Maybe she didn’t recognize–no, there’s no way she wouldn’t recognize my mental touch after hundreds of years. Could be she’s acting on pure instinct, or she’s afraid I’ll try to separate you two. I don’t know.”   
  
Rose rubbed her eyes and exhaled slowly. “So, piece of the TARDIS in my head. That’s why I’m telepathic?”  
  
“Mmm.” He nodded. “Her presence must be amplifying your natural abilities exponentially.”  
  
“She’ll take it back when she’s all fixed though, right?”  
  
“Should do.”  
  
“And will I still be telepathic?”   
  
“No way to tell.” The Doctor’s mind nudged against hers and she nudged right back. He smiled. “Although, I could get used to that.”   
  
He leaned forward and nuzzled the side of her face with his own, mirroring the action with his mind. She sighed in contentment when he pressed his lips to her cheek, trailing a slow line of kisses down past her jaw to her neck.   
  
Rose fought to stay focused. She had a very important question for him. “If I am telepathic, d’you think there’s a way I could…”  
  
“Hmm?” The tip of his nose glided over the swell of her shoulder.   
  
“Be in your mind all the time? Not like _in_ your mind–but is there a way I could be connected to you like–like your people were?”  
  
The Doctor slowly raised his head. His eyes were full of disbelief, confusion, and a tiny spark of hope.   
  
“So, y’know, you wouldn’t have to be alone in there anymore.”  
  
“Y-you’d do that?” he asked softly.   
  
Rose nodded.  
  
He stared at her for a few seconds longer, eyes searching hers intently for any sign of doubt or deceit, but slowly he began to realize she was serious. The biggest grin she had seen from him in a long time spread across his face, his eyes lightning up. He laughed and kissed her exuberantly. It was difficult to kiss when they were both smiling so broadly and he pulled back after just a few seconds, resting his forehead against hers. “Yes, I think it would be possible. It’d take time and a bit of training on both of our parts, but yes, I think we could do it.”  
  
“So you want to?”  
  
“Oh, yes, Rose. Yes, yes, yes, yes.”   
  
Giggling, she kissed him and he responded with zeal, grabbing her waist and hauling her forward, pulling her with him as he eased backward. Her giggles increased as their limbs tangled and he narrowly avoided clonking his head against the headboard, but then they gradually faded as his kisses became more passionate. Their limbs sorted themselves out, their bodies pressed firmly against each other’s, held together by his arms around her back, and she became aware for the first time that morning that they were both starkers.   
  
They had spent ages making love the night before, and it had not been near as long for him as it had for her, but he was still as eager as she was. But she was also frightened. This last year and a half has proven how truly easy it was for them to be separated, and she never wanted to live apart from him again, but she knew now that it could happen at any time. And just because they were together again did not mean everything was over. They still had to deal with the Master and–oh, no, the Master, the election; they really needed to find out if he had won and come up with a plan to–  
  
She tore her mouth from his and sucked in a large gulp of air. She fully intended to tell him they had to stop, really, she did, but he and his bloody respiratory bypass did not give her a chance, trailing hungry kisses down her throat.   
  
_No, no, this is important–_  
  
His mouth latched onto that spot he favored on her neck, effectively scattering her thoughts, and she moaned loudly, rolling her hips into his. He made a noise, like a growl, deep in his chest and he flipped them over. She felt his mind caressing hers, mirroring the way his fingers stroked up and down her side, and she let out a quiet whimper at the sensation.  
  
A loud trilling noise pierced the air, startling them out of their stupor. The Doctor raised his head, staring dumbly at her for a moment, then the noise came again and they both realized what it was at the exact same moment.   
  
“No,” he growled.   
  
“I really should answer it.”  
  
“Ro-o-se…”   
  
“It could be one of the team. They wouldn’t know to call Jack.” She reached for her mobile on the bedside table. Not her old superphone, unfortunately. That had been smashed when she and the Master were fighting. Her fingers curled around it and she yanked it over.  
  
He sighed, dropping his head into the crook of her neck.  
  
Rose smiled, running her fingers through his hair while she looked at the name on screen. With an irritated sigh, she pressed ‘accept’ and held the phone up to her ear. “There’d better be a horde of Weevils rampaging through the city,” she greeted, still slightly breathless.   
  
_“Oops.”_ Jack said.  
  
“Yeah, oops.”  
  
 _“You can shag later. I need you both down here now.”_  
  
“I hate you.”  
  
 _“I know. Hurry up. If you’re not down here in five minutes I’m coming up.”_  
  
She rang off and set the mobile on her chest.   
  
The Doctor raised his head. “He sounded serious.”   
  
“He was. He owes me for interrupting him a number of times.”  
  
“Door’s got a thumbprint lock on it,” he reminded her.  
  
“That accepts his thumbprint as well as mine.”   
  
“Of course it does.” 


	58. Shots Fired

  
Jack and Martha were in the conference room. It was small room on the second floor, with a large table with a computer built into it, a phone and two sleek, curved lamps on top. Six chairs were positioned around it, two on each side, and one at each end. Jack sat at the head of the table and Martha was seated to his left. Both of them were watching the news on the screen on the opposite wall. He had ordered a plate of sandwiches, a bowl of tuna salad, and a small fruit platter from the nearby deli. They were already eating by the time Rose and the Doctor got there.   
  
The ex-Time Agent looked them up and down with a critical eye and pressed the mute button on the remote. “About time you two turned up.”  
  
“Mmm.” Martha covered her mouth with her hand. “I stopped him from coming after you,” she said around her food.   
  
The Doctor and Rose exchanged an annoyed look as they sat down on the empty side of the table. They grabbed paper plates and loaded them up with food, while Jack poured them each a glass of apple juice. He gave them a few minutes to eat in peace before he started telling them what they had missed.   
  
“Saxon won in a landslide,” he informed them curtly.   
  
Rose exhaled slowly through her nose and closed her eyes.   
  
“He’s already come from his meeting with the Queen. I’ve tried calling the entire team several times, no answer from any of them. The Brigadier called, though, and he’s used his influence with UNIT to prepare them for an imminent threat. I told him you were here by the way, and he says hello,” he added to the Doctor, who smiled. “We went by Martha’s so she could get a change of clothes–”  
  
Rose nearly dropped the bite of food she had just taken, and had to catch it with her hand, shoving it into her mouth. She chewed quickly, realizing for the first time that Martha was wearing different clothes–a dark green sweater and black pants. Rose swallowed, and then asked, “How?”  
  
Jack tapped the vortex manipulator on his wrist. “Didn’t we tell you? The Doc repaired this thing. It’s at full capacity–functions as both a time traveling device and a teleport. Surprised it didn’t wake you up. You felt it when we teleported here the first time.”  
  
“Ah, that was me," said the Doctor. "You started to wake up, but I figured it wasn’t important, so I sort of telepathically encouraged you to go back to sleep.”  
  
“Speaking of telepathy…” Jack prompted.  
  
“’s okay, I told him.” Rose smiled. “You should’ve seen his face.”  
  
Martha looked between the three of them, discerningly. “I’m missing something.”  
  
“Long story short, part of the TARDIS’s consciousness is slumbering inside Rose’s head, and has enhanced her natural telepathic capabilities,” the Doctor explained with cheerful smile. He lifted the sandwich to his mouth and took a hearty bite.  
  
“Seriously?” Jack looked between them. “That’s what’s caused all this?” Rose nodded and Jack cocked his head to one side for a moment and then shrugged. “Makes sense, considering the timing.”   
  
“So you can read minds?” Martha queried.   
  
Rose bit her bottom lip. “Well, yes and no. I can’t just tell what your thinking. But if I was to go inside your head then, yes, I could. I can do it from a distance, like the TARDIS, but they always know I’m there.”  
  
“Is it permanent?”  
  
The Doctor set down his sandwich, and wiped his mouth with the back of this hand. “Once the TARDIS retrieves the piece from inside Rose’s head, she may go back to normal, or her natural telepathic abilities may be stronger. Or she’ll retain telepathy entirely. We have no way of knowing. But, for now, she’s telepathic.”  
  
“And she’s good at it, too.” Jack added proudly.   
  
The moment the Doctor turned his attention back to his food however, Jack gave Rose a disapproving frown. She shook her head almost imperceptibly. She wasn’t _trying_ to hide everything from him, she just…hadn’t found the right moment to tell him the rest yet. The telepathy revelation had just been on a whim, fueled by her giddiness at waking up in his arms.   
  
She glanced Martha’s way and realized too late that her old friend was watching them with narrowed eyes. Rose gave her a pleading look before returning to her food.   
  
“Anyway,” Jack continued loudly. “When we got back, I did a check of the cells. Janet’s acting a bit oddly.”  
  
“Oddly?” Rose deadpanned.   
  
“Remember when we broke up that Weevil Fight Club?”  
  
Rose sighed. Yes, she did. Owen had been in a bad place and he had nearly gotten himself mauled to death by a Weevil in the fight ring. She had been able to save his life. Not that he had been very grateful. “Why?”  
  
“And do you remember how Janet was acting then?” he asked. “Same thing.”  
  
She set down her sandwich. Of course she remembered. It had not been a pleasant experience for her. “Someone’s hurting the Weevils?”  
  
“Think so. Need you to talk to it.”   
  
Well, she had seen that coming. Rose looked between Jack and the Doctor for a moment. “I don’t think that’s a good idea right now. Remember last time?”   
  
Jack sighed and nodded. “Alright, fine. But will you do it later?”  
  
“Later,” Rose agreed. “Now what else?”  
  
Jack looked at Martha. “You want to tell them or should I?”  
  
“I’ll do it.” Martha exhaled slowly. “I think I might have something. I went looking through some of the files earlier before you two turned up. Doctor, you said the Master is hypnotic.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“How’s it work?” asked Martha.  
  
“Well…” The Doctor furrowed his brow. “He can make people do or believe whatever he wants. It’s just a psychic trick; I can do it. I can also undo it. I’ve always been able to un-hypnotize his victims. But it was always one or two. Never this many at once.”  
  
“I think I know how he’s doing it.” Martha looked between Jack and Rose. “The Archangel Project that Saxon launched. He’s got fifteen satellites in orbit around the world. They carry all the mobile networks in the world. All of them. Every single mobile phone is connected through the same interface. Who in their right mind would agree to something like that? Sure it might be convenient but it’s also easier to control.”  
  
Understanding began to dawn on Rose. They had always suspected the Archangel Project was bad news, but they had been missing one crucial piece of the puzzle. Now that they understood the Master’s hypnotic skills, it was so obvious.  
  
“Brilliant,” the Doctor murmured. “Billions of cell phones, all connected, all controlled by the Master. He could listen in on anything, track anyone, and project a signal all across the world.”   
  
“And no one saw the flaw, no one protested because he was able to hypnotize those in power to let it pass.” Martha went on. “Britain’s networks went to Archangel. And by the time the foreign networks were asked to join, his signal was projecting around the world.”  
  
“Not at full power,” added the Doctor, “but inflecting everyone in its range, just enough that they would’ve thought it was a good idea for all the phones to be on Archangel.”   
  
Martha nodded.   
  
“Oh, Martha Jones, I have said it before, and I will say it again. You are a _star_!” He pushed away from the table and leaped to his feet. “Of course he’d use phones! Computers would allow more information, but with phones he gets more range. Everyone has phones these days. Everyone he needs to convince, anyway. But, _but_! He couldn’t use his usual tricks over the whole world for this long. People would begin to question it, break free of it, and soon everyone would know the truth. But no, no, no.” He raked his hands through his hair, pacing back and forth along the table. “He knows that, he wouldn’t risk it. So what is he projecting through the phones? Think, think, think.”  
  
“Something subtle?” Rose prompted.   
  
The Doctor froze for half a second then whirled around. “One of you, give me your phone!”   
  
Rose pulled hers out and tossed it to him. He caught it, pulling out the sonic screwdriver, and turned it on. “Wait, wait, wait. Hold on.” He banged the phone against the table and it began to emit a soft rhythm. Four beeps, over and over, the same rhythm.   
  
_Beep-beep-bee-beep, beep-beep-bee-beep.  
  
One-two-three-four, one-two-three-four. _  
  
“There it is,” the Doctor growled, setting the phone down on the table. “That’s how he’s doing it. That rhythm, containing layers of code, whispers away inside your heads day and night, telling you to trust Saxon, to believe in him.”  
  
Rose’s fingers began to mirror the rhythm. There was something intimately familiar about it. _Tap-tap-tap-tap._  
  
“Oh, yes!” the Doctor hissed. “Of course! That’s how he hid himself from me. ‘Cos I should have sensed there was another Time Lord on Earth. I should’ve known way back. The signal cancelled him out.”  
  
“I know that rhythm,” Rose murmured.  
  
“It’s been ticking away in your head for over a year.”   
  
“No, no. I _know_ it,” she insisted. Tap-tap-tap-tap. Rose looked at her fingers. Her pointer and middle were tapping out the beat together. She stopped, and then resumed with her fingers tapping one after the other, two beats each. It clicked. “Oh…” she breathed. “Doctor…look. Listen.” She tapped her fingers harder, more insistently, watching his face intently for a hint of understanding. “Like mine…but doubled.”  
  
The Doctor swallowed. “Oh. The heartbeat of a Time Lord.”  
  
The four of them listened in silence as the rhythm cycled through several times.   
  
“That’s your heartbeat?” Martha asked.  
  
“That’s what it sounds like. Don’t you remember the first time we met? You listened to my heartsbeats.”  
  
“That was a year ago, Doctor. I don’t even remember what I had for lunch that day.”  
  
He cocked his head once. “Fair enough.” Pointing the sonic at the phone once more, he silenced the beeping.   
  
Rose returned it to her pocket.  
  
Jack grunted, leaning forward, propping his elbows on the table. “Well now we know how he’s doing it. But can you stop him?”  
  
The Doctor sighed. “Not from down here.”  
  
“But we can fight back,” Rose said.   
  
He grinned at her. “Oh, yes!”   
  
“Look!” Martha gasped suddenly and pointed at the screen on the wall. “Turn it up, quick!”  
  
Harold Saxon was on screen, seated at a desk in front of the ornate fireplace in the Cabinet Room. Jack fumbled with the remote for a few seconds then un-muted the TV. _“–Britain. What extraordinary times we’ve had.”_ Even still his voice made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and her skin to crawl. _“Just a few years ago, this world was so small. And then they came, out of the unknown, falling from the skies.”_  
  
Saxon disappeared and footage of the Slitheen ship crashing into Big Ben filled the screen.   
  
_“You’ve seen it happen,”_ his voice continued. _“Big Ben destroyed, a spaceship over London.”_  
  
Then news footage of the ghosts appearing followed by Cybermen on the attack.   
  
_“All those ghosts and metal men.”_  
  
More footage, this time of the Racnoss ship over London.   
  
_“The Christmas Star that came to kill.”_  
  
Rose dug her fingers into the table. She understood it better than anyone else. After all, she had lived through it all twice over.   
  
_“Time and Time again the government told you nothing.”_ Saxon came back on once more. _“Well not me. Not Harold Saxon. Because my purpose here today is to tell you this: Citizens of Great Britain…”_ He paused, seemingly too overwhelmed for words. _“I have been contacted. A message, for humanity, from beyond the stars.”_  
  
“No way,” Rose said. “He hasn’t got–”   
  
“Shhh,” the Doctor hissed.  
  
Saxon had disappeared once again and a new video was playing. A single metallic sphere hovered in front of a black background. Two fissures ran across the top half and around the lower half, with lights that flashed through them as it spoke. _“People of the Earth,”_ it greeted in a female voice, _“We come in peace. We bring great gifts. We bring technology and wisdom and protection. And all we ask in return is your friendship.”_  
  
Saxon made a face somewhere between humored and affectionate. _“Ohh, sweet. And the species has identified itself. They’re called the Toclafane.”_  
  
“What?!” the Doctor blurted out.   
  
_“And tomorrow morning they will appear. Not in secret… but to all of you. Diplomatic relations with a new species will begin. Tomorrow, we take our place in the universe. Every man, woman and child. Every teacher and chemist and lorry driver and farmer. And every…oh, I don’t know…medical student?”_  
  
The Doctor, Rose, and Jack whipped around in their seats. Martha was staring at the screen, paler than they had ever seen her, wide-eyed with terror.   
  
“He knows about me,” Martha whispered fearfully. “How does he know about me? How does he even know this is where I’m from!?”  
  
Rose shook her head. “I dunno! He never got near your flat. We made sure he wouldn’t be able to without us knowing. But there’s loads of other places he could’ve seen you or your picture, I–”  
  
“But if he knows about me then he’s gotta know about my family.”   
  
Rose’s eyes widened.   
  
A shrill beeping filled the room without warning. It took Rose exactly three seconds to place it, and then she was flying from her chair, out of the room, across the walkway, and down the stairs to her computer terminal. She heard the others following her. She grabbed onto the end of the railing and swung herself around before her feet even touched the ground, and dropped into her chair. Her momentum caused it to hit the wall, but she pushed herself off of it with her foot and grabbed onto the edge of her desk, pulling herself in. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, entering the code to silence the alarm then brought up the information.  
  
 _ **SUBJECT: JONES, MARTHA  
LOCATION: RESIDENCE  
INTERNAL CENSOR: TERMINATED  
EXTERNAL CENSOR A: CRITICAL DAMAGE  
EXTERNAL CENSOR B: ABNORMALITY DETECTED**_  
  
She brought up the readings for the external censors. Censor A registered an intense kinetic force as well as a massive spike in heat and chemical release, which Censor B also registered, that had begun exactly twenty seconds prior. She clicked the shortcut to the CCTV footage from Martha’s street and what she saw made her gasp. Behind her, Martha let out a cry of shock and outrage. Thick black smoke issued from the windows of Martha’s apartment. Through it they could see thick orange flames.  
  
Jack wedged himself through Martha and Rose to see the readings from the censors. “My guess is it was a bomb.”  
  
Rose licked her lips. The Master himself could not have planted it; they would have known the moment he got close to the flat. But since he had almost the entire world under his hypnotic influence, getting someone to plant a bomb in a random flat would have been all too easy.  
  
Martha let out a strangled cry and reached for her phone. She walked away from them towards the couch.  
  
“What are you doing?” the Doctor demanded.   
  
“My family, I’ve got to warn them.”  
  
“Don’t tell them anything!”  
  
She rounded on him, teeth clenched, and her phone already held up to her ear. “I’ll do what I like!”  
  
Rose, the Doctor, and Jack glanced at each other. The Doctor leaned down to have a look at the readings himself. “You’ve been spying on her,” he murmured softly.   
  
Rose did not bother denying it. They had put similar sensors around the homes of everyone they had spoken to regarding the Master, except all of them had been able to consent to it without timelines blowing up. “Tosh developed the software, censors that detect alien life forms in a certain area,” she murmured.   
  
“Mum!” Martha cried.   
  
Rose closed the windows and turned in her chair.   
  
Martha was perched stiffly on the edge of the coffee table. “Oh my God, you’re there. …I’m fine. I’m fine. Mum, has there been anyone asking about me? …I can’t! Not now!” Disbelief flashed across her face. “Don’t be so daft. Since when?” A few seconds passed and then she shook her head. “You said you’d never get back with him in a million years. …Dad? What are you doing there?”  
  
Martha looked up at Rose and the Doctor fearfully. It had been a very long time since she had seen the Jones family, or heard Martha talk about them, but Rose remembered quite clearly that Martha’s parents did not get along. And now suddenly her Mum and Dad were in the same room together, and ready to get back together from the sound of the conversation. The timing was too perfect to be coincidence.   
  
“Dad? Just say yes or no. Is there someone else there?”  
  
There was a pregnant pause and then, from all the way at her terminal, Rose could clearly hear Clive Jones shout, _“YES! JUST RUN! LISTEN TO ME! JUST RUN!”_  
  
“Dad!” Martha screamed and leaped to her feet. “What’s going on? DAD!” She listened for another moment and then snapped her mobile shut. “I gotta help them!”  
  
“We’re in Cardiff!” Rose reminded her.   
  
Martha pointed at Jack. “He’s got that teleport.”   
  
“That’s exactly what they want!” the Doctor warned. “It’s a trap!”  
  
“I don’t care!” she snapped. “We gotta get there now! …Oh, God, not just my parents!” She pulled out her phone again and dialed another number.   
  
While she did that, Rose turned to Jack. “She’s right. We have to help. Get the coordinates to her mother’s house.”  
  
Jack nodded and ran past them into his office. He went onto his computer to find their address and geographical location. While he was doing that, Rose retrieved a pair of thick, fingerless gloves from her desk and put them on. The Doctor frowned at her questioningly while she fastened them, but it turned to one of disapproval when she pulled an ammunition clip out as well, and stuffed it in her jacket pocket.   
  
Jack grabbed his coat off the hook and came out of his office. He slid it on and finished punching in the coordinates to Francine Jones’s house.   
  
“Tish!” Martha gasped. “Tish, be quiet and listen! You’re not safe! Wherever you are, you gotta get out of there. Go. Run! …I’M SERIOUS! They already got Mum and Dad! I don’t–Tish? Tish! Tish!”   
  
She smacked her phone shut and glared at the Doctor. “Only place he can go is planet Earth! Oh, yeah, that’s real bloody smart! Trap him on the planet where all the people we love are stuck!”  
  
“Martha, grab on,” Jack ordered, holding up his wrist.   
  
She stuffed her mobile back in her pocket and ran over. Rose unzipped her jacket and placed her other hand on top of the manipulator, next came the Doctor, and finally Martha put hers on top.   
  
“Hang on everyone.”  
  
Rose felt the manipulator’s punch against the fabric of reality as if it were against her own back, but it faded almost immediately as they were sucked into time itself. There was gold everywhere, gold light, gold dark, matter and non-matter, dust and nothingness. She could see so much and hear everything. The space was infinite, and yet there was none at all. The power of time flowed across her, through her, like warm water. If she had a mouth she would gasp in delight.   
  
Amidst the rush, Rose was aware on some level that they were whizzing across space, but not really through time. She could almost see it, the place where they would punch their way out of the vortex. She reached out, pressing carefully, but firmly against the walls so when the manipulator punched its way out, the work was half done and he damage was minimized.   
  
Then suddenly the gold of time was gone, and reality came flooding back. Sight, scent, and sound rushed back, assaulting her senses. They had landed on the sidewalk against a brick fence. Rose was aware of the others stumbling away, slumping against the house, moaning and grumbling in pain. But she did not hurt at all. Her body was absolutely buzzing with energy and she hopped from foot to foot in anticipation. She felt _alive._   
  
Voices raised in anger and agitation drew her attention towards the adjacent street. “Martha?” She glanced at her friend. “Are we here?”  
  
Martha shook her head quickly then looked around. “We’re just around the corner, we–that’s Mum!”   
  
She tore off up the sidewalk, past the house on the corner, and Rose, the Doctor, and Jack pelted after her. Rose’s body felt light as a feather. She caught up to Martha with ease. They rounded the corner onto the street where Martha’s mother lived and were greeted with the sight of a paddy wagon, about five government vehicles, a handful of police, all armed, and a severe looking blonde in a suit. Clive was already loaded into the wagon and Francine was being shoved in.  
  
“MUM!” Martha shrieked. “DAD!”  
  
Everybody whipped around in surprise, several of them training their guns on her, and Martha skidded to a halt. Rose slowed to a stop just ahead of her then backed away to stand next to Martha. Jack and the Doctor slowed and the four of them formed a tense line about a hundred feet from the men holding her parents.  
  
“MARTHA!” Francine shouted. “NO! GET OUT OF HERE! GET OUT!”  
  
“Oh my God,” Martha whispered.  
  
“Target identified!” The woman in the suit declared and two of the police officers rushed forward with their guns, dropping onto one knee. Rose whipped her gun from its holster underneath her jacket, and Jack was only a split second behind her. Martha backed away.   
  
The two groups were at a stalemate. Guns pointed at each other, sizing each other up, waiting.   
  
“Jack–” the Doctor started.  
  
“Shut up, Doctor,” Jack snapped and adjusted his grip.  
  
“Get us out of here,” he muttered. “Lower your gun and set the coordinates.”  
  
Jack hesitated for moment, then lowered his gun, and started pressing buttons on his manipulator.   
  
Rose raised her gun so it was pointing at the blonde woman. “Call ‘em off!” she hollered up the road.   
  
The blonde woman’s eyes locked with hers for a moment and they glowered at each other. Then: “Take aim!”   
  
“Shit,” Rose whispered.  
  
Jack turned and held out his arm. “Grab on!”   
  
Rose and the Doctor placed their hands over the manipulator.   
  
“Mum!” Martha shouted.   
  
“JUST RUN!” Francine screamed as Jack barked, “Martha!!”  
  
“Fire!” the blonde ordered.  
  
The cops began to fire just as Martha turned and flung her arm out to clamp down over the manipulator. Rose felt the punch against the fabric of reality. Before they were sucked into time, however, she heard the Doctor scream and she thought she felt something hit her in the leg… Then they were whizzing through time and space and she no longer had a body to feel.   
  
All too soon they rematerialized in t he Hub from the exact same spot they had left. She felt just as energized as the first time. Jack collapsed to the ground. It took her a second, and seeing the blood on the floor, to realize that he was dead. Martha staggered away.   
  
A burning pain flared in her leg and Rose let out a quiet hiss of pain. Looking down at her jeans, she saw the tear in the fabric on her thigh and the blood beginning to pour from the wound. She must have been hit by one of the bullets before they had dematerialized. Her body was already dealing with it though, destroying the bullet and healing the damage. She would be fine in a few minutes.  
  
The Doctor gasped and she turned her head. His face was twisted in agony and he was doubled over, clutching his midsection.   
  
“Doctor?!” Rose asked.  
  
He opened his eyes, looking down at himself, and pulled his hand away. It was covered in dark, orange-ish blood.   
  
“No!” she shrieked, rushing towards him as he stumbled under his own weight. She caught him, holding him up, and ignored the pain in her leg from the new strain on it. “Martha, he’s been shot!”  
  
Martha cursed and stumbled forward to have a look. “Not good. Do you have an infirmary?  
  
“The morgue doubles as one,” Rose answered, ducking under the Doctor’s arm.   
  
Martha supported him on his other side and together, they helped him across the landing. Rose's leg screamed in protest with each step, but at the same time she could feel the tingling warmth of her body mending the damage with every passing second.   
  
Rose glanced briefly at Jack, still dead on the floor, before she flipped the light switch on and they began their descent down the stone steps into the morgue. Once they got down there, they helped the Doctor up onto the examination table, and laid him down on his back. Martha unbuttoned his brown jacket, took one look at his shirt, and asked for scissors.   
  
Rose wrenched open the cabinet where Owen stored the medical supplies, and pulled out a pair of scissors. She tossed them to Martha who caught then deftly and started snipping his shirt with practiced ease. She pulled the blood-soaked pieces away from his skin, examined the wound for a few moments, and then pursed her lips.   
  
Meanwhile, Rose assessed the progress of her leg. The rejuvenation had reached her muscles. At this rate, it would be at the skin level within the next minute. This was faster than normal and oddly enough, she was not feeling drained at all. Not even a little. Perhaps that jaunt through the Vortex really had given her a boost of energy. She should do that more often.   
  
“Got to get…bleeding stopped,” the Doctor panted, drawing her attention back to him. For all his superior physiology, that was not something he could do.   
  
“What happened?” Jack demanded as he came bounding down the stone steps into the morgue.   
  
“The Doctor’s been shot. Stomach. Looks bad.” Martha reported.   
  
“How bad? Regeneration bad?”  
  
“Possibly. I dunno much about those healing comas you talked about, Doctor, but I don’t think you’ve got that kind of time.”  
  
“Oh, brilliant,” the Doctor hissed.   
  
Rose licked her lips. She could do it. It had been a while since she had dealt with a wound this bad, but the process had not changed. This just was not how she had planned on telling him. The Doctor let out a tiny whimper of pain, and her resolve hardened. No way she was going to let him regenerate on her. Not now. She had only just gotten him back. If it saved his life, then she would gladly deal with any anger that followed.   
  
She checked her leg once more–completely healed. Only the residual pain remained, and that would go away before long. So she unfastened her gloves, tucking them in the pockets of her jacket, and then pulled it off. She set it on the ground, and then unfastened her gun holster and set it down as well, looking up at Jack seriously. “I’ve got this.”   
  
Jack’s mouth twisted nervously. “You sure?”  
  
The Doctor groaned quietly.   
  
“Absolutely. You’ll explain it to him, yeah?”  
  
“I’ll do my best.”  
  
Rose nodded once, and then turned back to the Doctor who was watching them like a hawk. She smiled reassuringly as she reached into her mind and into the glowing piece of the TARDIS’s consciousness from which her abilities and knowledge flowed. Once upon a time, she had had all the power of time and space at her command. Enough to do anything she wanted, but too much to control properly. She had brought a man back to life, but she had done it forever yet there had been no personal cost. Now she barely had any of those great powers. Enough to do little things but not enough for the big stuff like turning Dalek fleets into dust or bringing the dead back to life.   
  
But she could heal.  
  
She placed her left hand on his temple, stretching her mind out towards his, and he initiated the temporary bond immediately. _Do you trust me?  
  
With my life, _ he responded immediately. _What are you going to do?  
  
Save you, _ she whispered before breaking the contact.  
  
Focusing in on that desire, she became aware of the energy that resided in her body, and ordered it to flow. A golden light emitted from her right palm, and she lowered her hand to his skin. Her perception extended through his entire body.  
  
She could feel his hearts beating out their dual-rhythm at an accelerated rate, the breath in his lungs, the signals racing through his nerves, the wild activity in his brain, the adrenaline coursing through his system. And she could feel the damage. Two separate bullet wounds so close together they had not seen them under the blood. The bastards had shot him twice. The bullets stopped about an inch from his spine. She concentrated on them first, and with a surge of power through her hand, she destroyed them.   
  
The Doctor gasped.   
  
Rose slipped her eyes shut and concentrated on assessing the damage. An artery had been hit and a few of his organs, one of which she were sure was not shared by humans. Clotting the blood was the first step, then she mended the blood veins and the artery that had been grazed, and then she moved on to his wounded organs.   
  
It was right about then that she felt her strength waning, the energy starting to slow. A thin layer of sweat covered her face. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to keep going. She finished with the organs, and then moved on to the muscles, fusing them back together, and relieving the tension as best she could. Finally it was just the skin left. She pressed down harder and grunted from exertion. Just a little more. Skin cells were always the easiest, so easy to manipulate, just a little bit of a jolt to speed up their rejuvenation and that was all.  
  
Rose gasped as she let the healing energy taper off. Panting heavily, she opened her eyes and found herself staring at the Doctor’s startled brown ones. Her lips twitched upwards feebly towards a smile and then she fainted.   
  
Martha rushed forward, but she was too late to catch her, and Rose hit the floor with a thud. She knelt next to Rose and rolled her over carefully, pressing two fingers to her pulse point.   
  
“Rose!” the Doctor cried and tried to sit up but Jack stopped him.   
  
“Whoa there, big fella. Not so fast. You need to take it slow.”  
  
The Doctor struggled against him, trying to see over the edge of the table. “Is she alright? Is she alright?”   
  
“She’s fine,” Martha reported after a moment. “Her pulse is a bit slow.”  
  
“That’s normal,” Jack assured her. “Just give her a little while to recharge and she’ll be fine.”  
  
“What?” the Doctor demanded.  
  
“You mean she’s done this before?” Martha asked.  
  
“Yeah, twice as far as a I know. Once for Owen–got himself mauled by a Weevil. Another time for Gwen’s boyfriend–stabbed. She fainted both times.” He knelt down and sighed. “Other, smaller things, she just gets weak or tired, but we know how to help her recover. …Ah, that’s why. Look at her leg.”  
  
Martha followed his gaze to Rose’s left thigh. There was a rip the size of a golf ball in the fabric and the area around it was stained with drying blood. Except for the blood, the skin underneath was completely fine.  
  
“She was shot as well. Must’ve healed herself. I’m gonna take her up to the couch. Doc, just hang tight for a sec.” He slipped one arm beneath Rose’s shoulders and the other under her knees and lifted her off the ground.   
  
“I’ll stay with him.” Martha said.   
  
Jack nodded and carried Rose out of the room.   
  
Martha turned to the Doctor and exhaled loudly. She had seen a lot of strange things this last year, but never something quite like that. The Doctor’s attention was on the doorway out into the main area so she took the opportunity to press her fingers against the patch of bare, pink flesh surrounded by blood. Just like Rose’s leg. She shifted her fingers, pressing intermittently. No signs of internal damage or weakness.   
  
“She healed you,” Martha murmured. “She didn’t just stop the bleeding and mend your skin, she _healed_ you.”   
  
The Doctor craned his neck to have a look at his stomach then rested his head on the metal table and said nothing. Martha found some towels in the cabinet Rose had gotten the scissors from. She got one of them wet in the sink and carried them back to the table. She started gently wiping the blood off his skin.  
  
“She has a piece of the TARDIS’s consciousness in her mind,” he said slowly. “But that’s not enough for something like this.”  
  
Martha shrugged. All of that was way beyond her. “She hasn’t told you everything. I saw her and Jack lookin’ at each other earlier. He knows more than he’s saying.”  
  
The Doctor exhaled through his nose and tilted his head to the side. “I’m sorry about your family. We’ll try to get them back.”  
  
Martha swallowed and nodded. But then her eyes widened as she realized there was one member of her family she had yet to speak to. “Leo,” she gasped, dropping the towel. She wiped her hands on one of the remaining ones and then wrestled her phone from her pocket and called her brother. She paced from the table to the wall as it rang once, twice, three times, and he finally answered in the middle of the fourth.  
  
 _“Sup?”_  
  
“Leo!” she exclaimed in relief. “Oh, thank God. Leo, you gotta listen to me. Where are you?”  
  
 _“I’m in Brighton. We came down with Boxer. Did you see that Saxon thing on telly?”_  
  
Brighton. There was no way the Master could have known. There were probably people at his house right now, waiting for him. “Leo, just listen to me. Don’t go home, I’m telling you. Don’t phone Mum or Dad or Tish. You’ve gotta hide.”  
  
He scoffed. _“Shut up.”_  
  
“On my life. You’ve gotta trust me. Go to Boxer’s, stay with him. Don’t tell anyone! Just hide!”  
  
 _“Ooh, a nice little game of hide-and-seek,”_ said a voice on the other end.   
  
Martha swore her heart stopped beating for a second. She froze next to the table where the Doctor had managed to get himself into a sitting position, and was examining the place he had been wounded.   
  
_“I love that. But I’ll find you, Martha Jones,”_ Harold Saxon went on. _“Been a long time since we saw each other. Must be, what? One hundred trillion years?”_  
  
“Let them go, Saxon,” she growled. The Doctor’s head snapped up. “Do you hear me?! LET THEM GO!”   
  
The Doctor reached out for the phone and Martha relinquished it. Above them, Jack was leaning on the railing with a grim expression, drawn in by Martha’s shouting. He and the Doctor exchanged a look and then Jack motioned for Martha to come upstairs. She shook her head but he just repeated the motion, insistently this time, and she sighed but did as she was asked. She heard the Doctor start speaking into the phone in a language she did not understand–Gallifreyan, most likely.   
  
“I’ve got the news playing on Rose’s computer,” Jack told her quietly. “They’re talking about us, and it says several members of your family have been taken in for questioning.”  
  
“Questioning for what?” Martha asked wearily.  
  
Jack sighed and pointed at the screen. “Apparently we’re terrorists.”   
  
She didn’t even have it in her to be surprised anymore. “Oh.”


	59. Rose's Secret

  
When Rose finally emerged from her restorative sleep, the first thing she was aware of was the powerful smell of rubbing alcohol and the faint scent of blood underneath. She opened her eyes and found herself staring at a dark blue button up shirt. She blinked in surprise and tilted her head upwards. Oh. The Doctor. Everything that had happened came flooding back in a rush.  
  
She smiled at him but he didn’t smile back. He didn’t look angry, exactly, but he wasn’t pleased. Slowly her grin faded and she licked her dry lips nervously. Either Jack hadn’t explained things or his explanation hadn’t been adequate for the worried Time Lord. She new from experience that getting up immediately wasn’t the best idea, which meant she had to just stay there and face the music. She shifted around, trying to get more comfortable, and her body whined in protest.   
  
The air rushed out of her in a heavy pant and she bit back a whimper. She’d forgotten how bad waking up from one of these was. That intense _craving_ she felt afterwards. She couldn’t believe Jack had forgotten, though. He’d been on top of these things since the beginning.   
  
For a long moment, the Doctor didn’t say anything. Then he held up a protein bar with the wrapper already open and waiting. Her eyes widened and her hand shot up to snatch it from his. She practically inhaled the thing. Bite after bite, shoving more into her mouth before she’d even swallowed the previous one.  
  
“Easy,” he cautioned, propping her shoulders up with his arm so she could swallow.   
  
The process took a lot out of her. The first time she’d healed a serious injury she’d been in quite a pitiful state after waking up, moaning and crying on the bed, weak but not enough to pass back out, and craving food. Ianto had been the one to figure out she had depleted her body’s energy levels and after eating a plateful of fish, cheese, nuts, and eggs, she felt loads better. Her body took care of the rest, and she was at a hundred percent within an hour or so. So Owen made up a list of things that would give her plenty of protein and vitamins, and Jack made sure they always had enough around for her.  
  
Healing little things, Rose discovered, wasn’t quite so bad. A scrape or a fractured bone didn’t require as much energy all at once and she was usually able to keep herself going by consuming foods from Owen’s list immediately after. Jack had ordered she always keep a pack of nuts and a protein bar with her when they went out on missions, and there was a tin of cashews and a pack of protein bars under the seat in the SUV.   
  
When she was finished with the protein bar, the Doctor shifted her so her shoulders were propped against the arm of the couch. He leaned forward and plucked a red bottle from the coffee table and handed it to her. She recognized the smell before she even saw what was inside, and she locked her hands around it firmly, lifting the rim to her lips. On top of that list of foods he’d made, Owen had cobbled together a recipe for a shake with lots of protein and vitamins for her, and made sure to keep the kitchen stocked to make at least three at all times.   
  
“Jack said you’d be wanting these when you woke up,” the Doctor told her as she drank.   
  
Uh oh, she knew that tone; slightly detached, way too conversational for the circumstances. He was angry and barely trying to hide it. She glanced up at him.   
  
“Said the process saps your energy and you need a heaping helping of proteins and vitamins to get you back on your feet.”  
  
She nodded.  
  
“So. You want to explain to me just how you did that?”  
  
She swallowed and lowered the bottle. She smacked her lips a few times, licking the bits off and drawing them into her mouth. “That thing in my head–the TARDIS–it started right around then. I don’t know how it works. I just…sort of know what I need to do.” She took another drink.  
  
“I see.”  
  
“Is that alright?”   
  
“You shouldn’t be able to do that, Rose.” He told her seriously. “The TARDIS’s consciousness amplifying your mental abilities is one thing. But this is something else entirely.”  
  
“Can’t the TARDIS heal herself?”  
  
He nodded tersely. “Yes. She draws power from the Time Vortex and it can function as a restorative.”  
  
“Isn’t that what I just did?”  
  
“That’s a natural ability for her. It’s part of her biology.” The Doctor opened his eyes. “You shouldn’t be able to do that, Rose, even with a part of her consciousness in you. You might be subconsciously aware of how the process works but you _physically_ should not be able to draw on the Vortex that way.”   
  
“Well, maybe I’m not,” she said flatly. “Maybe this is just a part of me. I dunno.”  
  
The Doctor was quiet for a long minute. She continued to take sips of her shake and listened to the familiar sounds of the Hub. Then he lifted his hand brushed his fingers across her cheek. She lowered her cup.   
  
“You were so pale. I thought you were dead when I saw Jack lift you off the floor, even though he told me you’d be okay. I’ve been watching the color return to your cheeks for the last hour.”  
  
“How long was I out?”   
  
He swallowed. “Two hours.”   
  
“Okay.” She nodded. “Not bad. The first time I was out for three.”  
  
The Doctor made a noise of exasperation. “And I suppose it didn’t occur to you that this could be a bad thing?”  
  
“Actually, it’s occurred to me quite a lot,” she corrected tersely.  
  
“Right. Anything else? Any other secrets you’ve been keeping that I need to know?” He asked tartly.  
  
She had loads of them. Things she’d done, things she’d seen, things she’d learned. That glimpse into their future she’d been given. Aliens she’d met, friends she’d made, people and creatures that were waiting in hope after being dumped here through the rift that the Doctor would return one day with his time machine to take them home. But all that could come later after they’d defeated the Master. Right now that was the task that required his attention.   
  
Rose took another long swig, swishing the shake around in her mouth to stall, and swallowed slowly. “It’s not like I’ve been _keeping_ secrets. I just haven’t had a chance to tell you. It’s been over a year,” she reminded him.  
  
“But is there anything else you’ve been able to do that you couldn’t before?”  
  
“Well, I destroyed those bullets inside you.” She took another long, slow drink.  
  
“I felt that.”   
  
“And I can get these sort of…vague impressions of things about to happen or things that have happened–but I don’t have any control over those and they’re very random. Beyond that, there’s nothing that I’ve noticed.” She frowned petulantly at her empty cup. Usually a bar and a shake was more than enough. Not this time, it seemed. Maybe it was because she’d destroyed and healed in one go.  
  
“Do you need more?”  
  
She nodded.  
  
“Jack!” the Doctor shouted. His voice echoed through the Hub and Jack appeared a moment later on the second level. “Can you whip up another one of these?”  
  
Jack saluted and walked around the walkways towards the stairs that led to the kitchen. Rose watched him go silently before turning back to the Doctor.   
  
“So, what did I miss? ‘Cos you got that look in your eye that means you’re thinkin’ really hard about something.”  
  
The Doctor sighed. “While you were out, Martha contacted her brother and somehow the Master interrupted the call. We had a little chat.”   
  
Rose shifted, sitting up a little straighter. “Tell me.”  
  
He heaved another sigh, puffing out his cheeks, and leaned his head against the wall. “Blimey, where to begin?”  
  
“Did he say anything about the Toclafane?”   
  
“No. But they can’t be Toclafane, not really. They’re just made up. Stories told to kids on Gallifrey to make them behave and stay in their beds at night. Like the Bogeyman.”  
  
“Looked pretty real to me.”  
  
“Well, yes, but they’re not Toclafane.”  
  
“And you didn’t recognize them?”  
  
“No, never seen ‘em before.”   
  
“Great,” she muttered. “What else did he say?”  
  
“Oh just…well, it’s not important. But he’s somehow managed to make us public enemies one through four.”   
  
Rose blinked. “What?”  
  
“Apparently we’re extremely dangerous terrorists. So I don’t think we’ll be ordering pizza tonight.”  
  
Rose snorted. “Are you kidding? They’d probably knock off the delivery fee if we told them what the hell we’d done this time.”   
  
He frowned at her.   
  
“Look, Doctor, Jack and I are a part of Torchwood. According to the royal charter, you’re to be apprehended on sight. So we technically could say you are our prisoner and Martha’s being held for her association with you. You two are safe with us.”  
  
“What makes you think you can get away with this?” he demanded. “He’s Prime Minister.”  
  
“And we’re outside the government’s control. We might have to answer to them occasionally, but they’re not allowed to interfere without good reason.”  
  
This didn’t seem to reassure him. “So you’re saying Torchwood’s almost entirely left to its own devices? No bloody wonder Torchwood One was able to get away with everything they did.”  
  
“Jack is not like Yvonne Hartman. What we do, we do for the good of the people and the planet. If we had to worry about cutting through all the red tape and being apprehended, having our work looked through and seized, we would never get anything done.”  
  
The Doctor exhaled through his nose and simply shook his head. Then he stopped. “And as Prime Minister, wouldn’t Saxon have the authority to declare your suspected terrorism a good enough reason to interfere?”  
  
Rose closed her eyes. She’d known there was a possibility this would happen. The moment he’d been elected, the barrier that Torchwood formed between the two of them had been crippled. He could smash through it in no time at all, especially now that she was labeled a terrorist. “Shit,” she breathed.  
  
“That’s what I thought. We might have to run, you know. Are you up for it?”  
  
“Not yet. I don’t even know if I can stand. I need another shake, maybe some food. My body’s really good about restoring itself; it just needs a little boost in the beginning.” She shifted around again. “Help me sit up properly?”  
  
It took a little maneuvering, and the Doctor had to prevent her from dropping off the couch once, but they managed to get her into an upright position between him and the arm of the couch. She sighed, resting her head on his shoulder.  
  
Martha came down the stairs over Rose’s terminal and smiled at them. “Hey. Feeling better?”  
  
“Getting there,” Rose replied.   
  
“And you, Doctor?”  
  
He shrugged. “Bit sore but it’s fading.”  
  
“Good.” She plopped down onto the couch on the Doctor’s other side and sighed heavily. “I’ve been refreshing every page talking about us every thirty seconds, I swear. It just says my family’s been taking in for questioning. No mention of Leo, though. Guess he’s not as daft as he looks.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Rose mumbled.   
  
“’s not your fault,” Martha sighed. The Doctor lifted his arm and she shifted closer.   
  
He squeezed her tightly, reassuringly.   
  
“But what are we gonna do? Not like we can just walk around in public now.”  
  
“Oh, I think I can do something about that,” the Doctor said nonchalantly. “In fact, I will. Just as soon as Jack gets down here.”  
  
“Anything we can do to help?” Rose asked.  
  
The Doctor gazed around Torchwood thoughtfully. “Lots of equipment in here so I should have everything I need. Do you have a work area?”  
  
“Several.”  
  
“Excellent.”  
  
Jack turned up a few minutes later with a tray full of food: a shake, a platter of fried eggs, and four bowls of microwavable noodles. Martha, Jack, and the Doctor each took a bowl of noodles. Rose barely had hold of her plate before she was shoveling the eggs into her mouth like a starving woman. Once she’d finished her eggs, Rose picked up the remaining bowl and began to eat it slowly, savoring.  
  
“Really took it out of you this time,” Jack mused.   
  
Rose rolled her eyes. “Tell me about it.”  
  
“So, Doctor…”   
  
“Hmm?” the Time Lord grunted around a mouth full of food.  
  
“I got a question. How come the ancient society of Time Lords created a psychopath?”  
  
The Doctor glowered at no one in particular as he swallowed his food. “He wasn’t always that way. Long time ago, just barely out of infancy, we were friends then, I can’t really remember everything, but he wasn’t always….” He exhaled slowly. “You have to understand the way Gallifreyan society worked. Children were taken from their families at the age of eight to enter the Academy. That’s when we saw eternity. During initiation, we’re taken to the Untempered Schism. It’s a…gap in the fabric of reality through which could be seen the whole of the vortex.”  
  
Rose inhaled sharply through her nose. “But that’s–”  
  
“I know.” He wasn’t looking at them. His eyes were fixed on something in the distance and clouded with memories. “You stand there, eight years old…staring at the raw power of time and space. Just a child,” he whispered. “Some would be inspired…some would run away…and some would go mad.” Then he shuddered. “Oh, I dunno.” He took another bite of his soup.  
  
“What about you?” Martha asked.  
  
“Oh, the ones that ran away. I never stopped!”  
  
“And the Master…?”  
  
“Sometimes it was difficult to tell if he was inspired or went mad. I think it was a little bit of both, to be honest.” He sighed. “He was normal enough as a child but sometimes, if you looked and listened hard enough to what he was saying and doing, you could tell.”  
  
“A mad genius?” Jack deduced.  
  
The Doctor nodded.   
  
“Sounds a lot like you. You sure you weren’t all three? A mad genius who never stops running.”  
  
He laughed quietly. “I never thought of it that way.”  
  
Rose smiled. Despite the circumstances, it was nice having the four of them together like this. It wouldn’t last long, though. Sooner or later they’d have to act. They were technically on the run, and aliens would be landing at dawn. And she told them that. What bit of humor that had formed in the atmosphere was squashed, leaving behind seriousness and a sense of dread.   
  
Martha shook her head. “But why’s he gone and made us terrorists? I don’t get it.”   
  
“Well, it’s keeping us from going out in the open and warning everyone.” Jack pointed out.   
  
“That it is,” the Doctor agreed. “My guess is the Archangel network is fragile. Anyone who’s confronted him directly, anyone not under the influence of Archangel, he’s probably dealt with easily. Like I said, he can control small numbers with ease. But if masses and masses were suddenly being presented with undeniable proof of what Archangel is, and what he’s been doing, well, he’d lose control. But right now, no one’s going to listen to us.”  
  
“They would’ve before.” Martha looked between the two members of Torchwood. “That’s what I don’t get. You’ve got all this power and influence–”  
  
“So how come we didn’t tell the world about ‘im when we had the chance?” Rose finished with an arched brow. She spooned more soup into her mouth.  
  
“Yeah.”   
  
“We tried, remember?” Jack reminded her. “We sent Torchwood One after him since they had control over London. But all we had was our word and suspicions, and he was able to convince them he was human.”   
  
“So not only did he get their trust,” Rose went on, “he made it look like we had poor judgment and had jumped to conclusions. They trusted _us_ less.”  
  
“Then we tried to go to UNIT. They had files on the Master so they knew what it meant if he was back. But before that went anywhere, they contacted Torchwood One just to confirm they were aware of our suspicions and, well. I bet you can guess.”  
  
“So UNIT trusted you even less than before,” the Doctor concluded. “And if you’d tried going public with your accusations, no one would’ve believed you, or either UNIT or Torchwood One would’ve countered you somehow.”  
  
Jack and Rose nodded. “And since we had no actual proof of anything there was nothing we could do,” the latter sighed. “Nothing we could pin on him.   
  
“There’s his backstory,” Martha pointed out. “I never noticed anything, I was never really looking, but if people had known–”  
  
He nodded. “Tried that, too. He filled in the holes.”  
  
“We tried _everything_ we could but without proof….” Rose trailed off and twisted her lips. “But if we’d known about the hypnosis, things might’ve gone differently.”  
  
“Definitely.”  
  
“Well, nothing we can do about that! Gotta focus on right now! And right now…” The Doctor set the bowl on the table and leaped to his feet. “I have a plan!”  
  
“And I’d love to hear it.”   
  
“The Archangel Network!” He turned, no doubt expecting to see understanding or amazement at his brilliance on their faces, but the three humans just stared blankly at him. He wasn’t discouraged, though. “Its primary function is to make everyone like Harold Saxon.”  
  
“Yeah, Doc, we know,” Jack said dryly.  
  
“No, but don’t you see? Almost everyone caught in its range falls under its influence without even realizing. But if I were to, oh, say, reverse it…”  
  
“Change the signal,” Martha realized. “So that it tells everyone to not like him!”  
  
Rose grinned. “That’s brilliant!”  
  
“Except!” The Doctor interrupted loudly. “I can’t do that from down here. I’d have to be able to access the satellites themselves and I’d need the TARDIS for that.”   
  
“But there has to be a place that monitors the satellites,” Jack pointed out. “Some way they can control them, update them, or disable them.”  
  
“But we’re terrorists, remember?”  
  
Jack sighed loudly. “Okay, so why did you even tell us this?”  
  
“Because I want you to understand. This kind of system is its own worst enemy. Just a few bits and pieces of the code switched and suddenly the world will hate him. There is a way I can disrupt the system, however, without actually reversing it. Answer me this: if you liked someone, trusted them, and were willing to put your life and livelihood in their hands, only to find out this person was horrible and had _forced_ you to feel that way?”  
  
“I’d hate him,” Martha answered immediately.  
  
The Doctor grinned, a slightly mad, teeth-bared grin, and pointed at her. “Exactly.”  
  
They stared at him for a moment as they struggled to comprehend his plan. “So…you’re gonna disrupt the signal somehow?” the medical student questioned.  
  
“It all comes back to the Master in the end. But if I were to cancel it out, his control over them would be broken and people would see him for what he really is, and slowly they’ll begin to wonder why they ever thought otherwise. His own system will be his downfall.”  
  
“Can you? Disrupt the signal, I mean?” Rose asked.   
  
“Oh, sure, simple. I just need to get the disrupter around him.”  
  
“Just one problem: we’re terrorists,” Jack reminded him. “There’s no way they’d let us anywhere near him. Even if we used my vortex manipulator, we’d have to land within five feet of him or we won’t get to him before they get us.”  
  
“Not if they can’t see us,” the Doctor said. He looked between the three of them for a moment, grinning. “Ja-ack. I’m gonna need a laptop–preferably a PC–a mobile or two from the last year or so, tools, your TARDIS keys and a place I can work.”  
  
“Yes, sir.” 


	60. Here Come the Drums

  
Jack’s vortex manipulator really seemed to do a number on the others, but each time Rose went hurting through time and space, she came out feeling like she’d just downed a case of energy drinks. But it was also different than that. She wasn’t being stimulated by a concoction of chemicals and juices, pure energy was literally buzzing through her body. So while the others leaned against the metal wall of the building they materialized next to, Rose was hopping from foot to foot like an excited child on a sugar rush.   
  
The night was cool, but not unpleasantly so. They could hear the murmur of overlapping voices and the hum of engines not too far away. A quick look around confirmed they’d landed at an airport. Rose flexed her gloved fingers eagerly.  
  
“Oh, I’m starting to hate that thing. And you used to travel with it regularly?” Martha asked Jack.  
  
“Didn’t used to be like this.” He explained as he cracked his neck. “I guess four people’s a bit much for one manipulator.”  
  
“I feel fine,” Rose informed them, trying to keep the chipper note out of her voice.   
  
Martha glared at her enviously and adjusted her red leather jacket.  
  
The Doctor looked her up and down critically for a moment then gave his head a quick shake to clear it. He pulled his TARDIS key out of his pocket and held it by the thin rope tied around it. It was now fitted with a tiny device welding it into the Archangel Network. “Alright, everyone. Remember. The keys do not make you invisible, just unnoticed. Don’t scream or shout, no big movements or running. Draw attention to yourself and the spell is broken. Just…keep to the shadows if you can help it. We’re here to find out his plan, not attack him.”  
  
“Not yet,” Jack muttered.   
  
The Doctor shot him a warning look, and then slipped his key over his head; Martha and Jack followed suit. Rose pinched her necklace between her fingers and pulled, splitting it apart, and slid it around her neck. She pressed the two ends back together and waited until she felt them fuse back together. Then, moving slowly, the four of them headed around the side of the building towards the amassing people.  
  
Not long after finishing their portable perception filters, the Doctor had overheard a news reporter say that the President of the United States had landed in Great Britain. Who would be there to meet him but the new Prime Minister? Jack was easily able to determine which airport they were at, as well as the coordinates for his manipulator.   
  
The four of them peered around the edge of the building. Air Force One was visible in the distance. Two SUVs and a truck were driving towards the group of people out on the tarmac–no doubt the Americans. A line of British soldiers stood at the ready, and in front of them was none other than Harold Saxon and his wife, Lucy.  
  
The sight of him made Rose’s muscles tense, part in anger, part in fear. All this time and she still could not forget what Saxon done. Being near him, even with the Doctor, Martha, and Jack right beside her did little to help. Her taught body did not escape the Doctor’s notice. He placed a soothing hand on her back but the fury in his eyes was unmistakable.   
  
“It’s alright. He won’t see us. But keep your mind contained,” he ordered softly. “Do not attempt any form of telepathy, not even with me.”  
  
She nodded stiffly.   
  
“Come on.”  
  
The four of them made their way around the building and towards the line of British soldiers. They kept near the edge of the pavement, alongside a curtain of thick strips of fabric that stretched from about thirty feet in the air to a ground. The Doctor was careful to lead them around the patches of light just in case anyone happened to glance in their direction.   
  
Across the way, the American vehicles had stopped, and a group of black-clad soldiers formed a line that mirrored the British one. An older man in a suit strode towards the Saxons with two Secret Service agents behind him. President Winters.   
  
Saxon saluted when he neared. “Mr. President, sir!” they heard him say.  
  
Rose gritted her teeth.  
  
“Mr. Saxon,” Winters greeted him coolly. “The British Army will stand down. From now on, UNIT has control of this operation.”  
  
“You make it sound like an invasion.”  
  
“First contact policy was decided by the Security Council in 1968!” the president snapped. “And you’ve just gone and ignored it.”  
  
“Well, you know what it’s like. New job, all that paperwork,” Saxon rambled. “I think it’s down the back of the settee. I did have a quick look. I found a pen, a sweet, a bus ticket, and…have you met the wife?” he asked suddenly, motioning to Lucy who took a step forward.  
  
President Winters was not amused. “Mr. Saxon, I’m not sure what your game is, but there are provisions at the United Nations to have you removed from office unless you are very, very careful. Is that understood?”  
  
Saxon raised his hand and mimed zipping his lips shut. What the hell was he playing at?  
  
The president seemed to be wondering the same thing. “Are you taking this seriously?” Saxon nodded. “To business. We’ve accessed your files on these…Toclafane. First contact cannot take place on any sovereign soil. For that purpose, the aircraft carrier _Valiant_ is en route. The rendezvous will take place there at 8am. …You’re trying my patience, sir.”  
  
Saxon unzipped his lips. “So America is completely in charge?”  
  
“Since Britain elected an ass, yes. I’ll see you onboard the _Valiant_.” He turned to go but Saxon stopped him, asking if it would still be televised. After all, he’d promised. “Since it’s too late to pull out, the world will be watching. Me.”  
  
And with that, the President of the United States stormed back to his waiting car.   
  
Rose, the Doctor, Martha, and Jack watched in silence for a long minute. Saxon said something to Lucy who seemed to laugh then he motioned her towards a car waiting for them. Rose’s eyes flicked back to President Winters who was already leaving.  
  
“Anyone else get the feeling that’s what he wanted to happen?” she murmured. No one answered her because right then the Master turned around and for a moment, it seemed like he was looking right at them.   
  
She clenched her fists as adrenaline flooded her system, her body primed for fight or flight. Could he see them? Then Saxon looked away from them and strode towards the waiting car. Rose relaxed and stretched her hand towards the Doctor, seeking comfort. He squeezed her fingers reassuringly, brushing his thumb across the back of her hand.   
  
A wailing siren Rose had hardly noticed before suddenly reached crescendo as a police van drove past them. Saxon looked excited and bounded towards the van as it pulled to the stop. Two soldiers not unlike the ones that had been at Martha’s mothers house earlier hopped from the back and began forcibly unloading three very familiar adults.  
  
Martha made a soft, strangled sound.  
  
“Hi guys!” Saxon greeted Martha’s family, waving his hands. Francine and Clive shouted furiously at him as they were forced towards the waiting SUVs. Tish struggled fruitlessly against the two men holding her. Leo, however, was not present.   
  
“Oh my God,” Martha whispered.  
  
“Don’t move,” the Doctor warned.  
  
“But they…”  
  
“Don’t.”  
  
They watched the Jones family forcibly loaded into an SUV while the Master continued to taunt them. For the first time Rose was well and truly relieved that her mother was in another universe. The thought of that monster anywhere near her mum…. She clenched and unclenched her fists, her nails digging into the fabric of her gloves.  
  
“I’m gonna kill him,” Martha vowed.  
  
“Say I use this perception filter to walk up behind him and break his neck?” Jack growled.  
  
The Doctor glared at him. “Now that sounds like Torchwood.”  
  
“I’ll help him.” Rose saw the Doctor’s head swivel around out of the corner of her eye but she refused to look at him. After a moment, he turned away.  
  
“He’s a Time Lord, which makes him my responsibility. If anyone deals with him, it’s gonna be me.”   
  
“You better at least let me get a few hits in. I’ve been waiting a long time for it,” Jack said as he lifted his wrist to inspect something on his manipulator.   
  
They watched Saxon climb into the SUV Lucy was in. The soldiers were loaded up, the doors were shut, and the three vehicles moved away from the four onlookers on the tarmac.   
  
The Doctor looked down at Rose somberly and, apparently deciding such a thing was safe enough, tapped his mind against hers. Three precise nudges, like the knocks he’d told her about that morning that were used among Gallifreyans to request private telepathic conversation. Unsure of how to respond mentally to his request, she simply nodded once.  
  
She bit back the quiet sound of delight that threatened to escape her when she felt his mind slip into the outer area of hers where telepathic communication took place.   
  
_What is it?_ Rose asked.  
  
 _Would you understand if I said I didn’t want to kill him?_  
  
Rose drew back sharply, accidentally pulling her hand out of his. It took her a moment to collect her thoughts, which had scattered to the wind the moment he’d asked her such a thing. Did she want the Master dead? Certainly. There were very few beings in the universe that she wished death upon and he was one of them. She knew that the Doctor was his friend long ago, but to her knowledge, the Master had only proved time and time again that those days were over. He’d hurt him so many times. He’d hurt her, stolen some of her life from the Doctor. How could the Doctor not hate him even more than she did?  
  
But, then, on the other hand, the Master was only other Time Lord in existence. The only other living soul from Gallifrey left in the universe. If there ever came a time when she and another were the last humans, no matter what that other person may be like, she knew she could never truly want them dead.  
  
 _Yes,_ she answered honestly. _I don’t like it, but…yes.  
  
Thank you.  
  
But if you don’t plan on killing him…how exactly do you expect to defeat him? _  
  
Jack cleared his throat loudly, startling them both. He and Martha frowned at the two of them, the latter tapping her foot impatiently. “Care to share with the class?”   
  
“Oh,” the Doctor said. He let go of the connection and she sighed quietly. “No, sorry.”  
  
“Okay, fine. Just thought you’d like to know: I have the coordinates for the _Valiant_. It’s an aircraft carrier used by UNIT that was designed by our friend Saxon, if you remember the files.”  
  
“I remember.”  
  
Rose sighed. “Why…do I get the feeling this is a trap?”  
  
“Oh, it is,” the Doctor replied. “But I don’t know if it’s intended for us.”  
  
“Coordinates are set. We going?” Jack held out his wrist. For an answer, the Doctor placed his hand over the manipulator. Rose immediately covered his hand with hers. Martha groaned quietly but placed her hand on top of theirs.   
  
Rose knew immediately as they raced through the vortex that they were not only travelling across space, but time as well. She wasn’t sure if that was intentional or not but she trusted Jack to pilot them correctly. Even though this was the man who’d landed over a century and a half off course once. Granted he had been jumping two hundred thousand years that time.   
  
They materialized in a mechanical area. There were machines and pipes everywhere, marked with yellow and black tape, some of them issuing steam. They hummed loudly from all sides, suggesting the four of them had materialized somewhere in the middle of the _Valiant_ ’s mechanical area.  
  
Rose hopped around in a small circle while the rush of energy tapered off and the others groaned from the various positions they’d landed in. The Doctor was on the floor, Martha slumped against the one of the machines, and Jack was saved from hitting the floor when his arm looped around a metal railing. They seemed to be having more difficulty recovering than usual and she gave them a minute to collect themselves. Four jumps in one day, each one getting progressively worse. That had to be rough.   
  
“That’s it! Never again!” Martha vowed as she struggled to push herself up. Rose extended a hand to help her to her feet, and held her steady as she wobbled. “How come you aren’t having a hard time?”  
  
Rose shrugged. “Beats me.” She felt the Doctor’s mind bump clumsily against hers and she whirled around. “You alright?”  
  
“Yeah,” he panted as he sat up. “Sorry. Just checking–didn’t mean to–”  
  
“It’s fine.” She knelt beside him, placing her hand on his shoulder. “Can you stand?”  
  
The Doctor nodded but she still kept her hand on his arm as he climbed shakily to his feet.  
  
Grumbling under his breath, Jack pulled himself up and cracked his neck. “Ah, that’s better. Welcome to the _Valiant_.”  
  
“It’s dawn,” Martha realized. She walked towards one of the nearby portholes where early morning sunlight streamed through. “Hold on, I thought this was a ship. Where’s the sea?”  
  
“A ship for the 21st century,” Jack explained as he followed her over. “Protecting the skies of planet Earth.”   
  
“It’s an airship,” she breathes.  
  
“It’s an airship.”  
  
Rose couldn’t resist taking a look. She stretched up onto her tiptoes, peering over Martha’s head through the porthole. The sky stretched on endlessly before them and white puffy clouds drifted by the window. Over the hum of the machinery around them, the distant rumble of airplane engines could be heard.   
  
“Does this place have some sort of detention center?” Martha asked. “Where would he be keeping my family?”  
  
“Not sure,” Jack replied. “We have blueprints back at the Hub but I wasn’t the one who examined them.” He glanced at Rose, and Martha turned to her expectantly.   
  
Rose blinked, looking between the two of them. God only knows how many times she’d gone over those plans when she’d first gotten her hands on them. She hadn’t memorized them but she did have a general idea about the layout of the ship. She licked her lips, frowning thoughtfully. She was sure there hadn’t been any sort of prison onboard. Not that there weren’t places that could easily be converted to holding cells if needed. Plenty of rooms that were locked from the outside or required special clearance and credentials to open the computerized locks. But they wouldn’t be able to get to any of those, let alone _into_ them. But there was one place they might: the security center where the _Valiant_ security guards were based. A place like that had to have some place set aside to contain any detainees until such a time they were released or could be transported elsewhere.   
  
“Well?” Martha asked.  
  
“There’s loads of places they could be,” Rose said after a moment. “It would take us hours to search them all and most of them are protected by scanners that require special clearance. The chances of us searching them all without being detected are slim to none.”  
  
“We’ve gotta try.” Martha turned to the Doctor. “You can open those doors?”  
  
“Well…” He pulled out the sonic and wiggled it back and forth in his fingers. Rose began shaking her head but he didn’t seem to notice. “Should be able to, yeah.”  
  
“Well then what are we waiting for?”  
  
Jack held out his arm to stop Martha before she could leave. “That’s not gonna work.”  
  
“Why not?” she demanded.  
  
Jack cocked his head towards Rose and nodded for her to explain. “Thank you,” she said. “This ship was requisitioned by the Ministry of Defense at the time when Harold Saxon was a member. Archangel was already up and running at the time. Every single detail of this ship has his stamp of approval. You really think he’s gonna leave his security systems impervious to sonic technology?”  
  
The Doctor’s shoulders dropped and he made a face. “Oh, blimey. Forgot about that.”   
  
Rose nodded. “Deadlocks on everything but the basic, all-access doors. So most of those rooms I mentioned we can’t even get to. But there is a security hub. Place like that’s gotta have a place to hold anyone they detain onboard.”  
  
“Can we get there?”  
  
“If we can get to the higher levels, most likely. But I have no idea where we are on the ship. They could be right above us or they could be on the other side.”  
  
“No point in standing here.” Jack looked around. “I say we pick a direction and go. Come on.”   
  
He chose the corridor to their left and took off. They followed him without protest, keeping their eyes and ears pealed for signs of anyone else. Once, the Doctor’s advanced hearing alerted him to one maintenance worker and they had to stop, pressing themselves against the wall and holding still as the unsuspecting human passed by. Once the sound of his footsteps faded, they were off again.  
  
The further they went the more Rose began to notice a tingling in her mind. At first she paid it no mind. She was always getting weird little tingles and shivers but they weren’t cause for concern until they got more severe. But this one was heading there. The more it did, the easier it became to pinpoint its location. For the first time since its arrival, the TARDIS consciousness seemed to be awakening. And then…she heard it: a quiet, weak, and heartbreakingly familiar song trilling in her mind.  
  
A moment later, the Doctor stopped dead in his tracks. One look at his slack-jawed expression and she knew he heard it too.  
  
“We’ve got no time for sightseeing!” Jack hissed.  
  
“No, wait. Shhhhhh!” The Doctor held up his hand. Jack sighed and looked around for a sign that someone was coming. “Can’t you hear it?”  
  
“Hear what?”  
  
“I hear it, too,” Rose murmured urgently.   
  
“Doctor, my family’s onboard,” Martha reminded him, striding past determinedly.  
  
The Doctor wasn’t listening. “Brilliant!” He turned to the right and grabbed Rose’s hand. “This way!” They bounded down the set of grated stairs down to a long corridor with identical cement floors and walls. They raced through the steam issuing from the vents towards a door labeled with a large, bold 4.   
  
The song in Rose’s mind grew in volume and intensity, the light in her mind pulsing brightly, drawing her in. But why was the TARDIS was onboard the Valiant? Oh, God, she was terrified. Something had happened to the TARDIS, she didn’t know what, only that it had been horrible. She wasn’t sure if she was ready to know what had happened. It was one thing to feel it, but seeing it was another matter altogether. She could tell from the tension in the Doctor’s grip that he was afraid, too.  
  
 _We’re coming_ , Rose promised the ship.  
  
She received a feeble hum of greeting in reply.   
  
The Doctor let go of her hand when they reached the doors and grabbed the handles, throwing them open. And there she was, wedged against the far wall between boxes and crates, beautiful and blue, letters and windows shining with light. The TARDIS.   
  
“Oh, at last!” the Doctor exclaimed.  
  
Martha laughed gleefully. “Oh, yes!!”  
  
The two of them rushed towards it but Rose hung back, wary again. Now that she was this close she could practically feel something was wrong. Not unlike the vibe she got from Jack.  
  
“What’s it doing on the _Valiant_?” Jack wondered aloud. Glancing down at Rose, he added, “Are you okay?”  
  
She jerked her head back in forth but, nevertheless, ran up to the TARDIS just as the Doctor was unlocking it. He pushed it open and they all rushed in.  
  
But they stopped dead the moment they saw the interior. The room that used to be bathed in a gentle coral light was now as red as blood. A thick metal grating surrounded the console and rotor, forming an ominous pillar that contained inside it thick tubes and wires twisted and stretched around the console. There were thick pipes leading into the pillar and the coral struts were being used to support thick tubes as well. It was unnatural. It was horrifying.   
  
“What the hell’s he done?” Jack demanded.  
  
“Don’t touch it!” the Doctor ordered sharply.  
  
“I’m not going to.”  
  
Memories of that day in December when the pain had overwhelmed her came flooding back as she finally saw what had been done. As her eyes flitted around the room, taking in everything, and she could almost feel the pain of each wound to the ship again. The feeling of her skin being flayed as pieces of the console were ripped away. The pain of being stabbed as wires and cords were inserted where they shouldn’t be. Her insides being jerked around as parts were rearranged.  
  
Rose cried out in horror and anguish and her knees gave out. She would’ve hit the floor if Jack hadn’t caught her. He held her upright in his arms as she shook from the shock of it. The TARDIS continued her mournful lament in her mind.   
  
“What’s he done to her?” she cried.  
  
“She sounds…sick,” Martha said.  
  
The Doctor was circling the console with intensity and horror in every movement. His hands were clenched tightly into fists. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It can’t be.”   
  
Rose straightened up but Jack didn’t let go of her, just in case. The phantom pains had disappeared but she didn’t trust them to not reappear. “Doctor, please!”  
  
The Time Lord’s face was a picture of fury. “He’s cannibalized the TARDIS!” he spat.  
  
Jack took a step forward and she walked with him. He looked the pillar up and down. “Is this what I think it is?”   
  
“It’s a paradox machine.”   
  
Rose shook her head. “What’s that? And why does it hurt?”  
  
The Doctor looked at her seriously. “Are you in pain now?”  
  
“N-no. Just phantom pains. I…I can’t actually _feel_ her like I used to. I mean she’s in my mind, I can hear her louder than ever, but I can’t feel her.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
“But why’s he done this?” Martha asked.  
  
“I’m not sure. But paradox machines they…they allow paradoxes to occur without ripping a hole in the fabric of reality. Keeps the reapers out, too. Turning a TT capsule into one of these is just about the worst thing you can do to it. You don’t do it for something small, like saving a man from dying,” he explained with significant glance towards Rose. She flinched. “No, no, no. You only make a paradox for something big. Something that could destroy the universe or even time itself.”  
  
Jack’s arms tightened around her. “So whatever he’s planning…”  
  
The Doctor stared at him gravely but didn’t respond. He didn’t have to.   
  
While he continued to inspect the machine, Jack looked down at Rose. She met his gaze sadly. “Do you want to sit down?”  
  
She nodded silently and he lowered her to one of the thick pipes on the floor. She perched on it stiffly, watching the Doctor as he moved around. He appeared to be looking for something. _He knows a lot about these_ , she mused. But how? Surely he hadn’t ever made one himself. Was it a subject taught in school or–or was it something he learned during the Time War? A war through time itself had to be chock full of a variety paradoxes. They’d have to have some way to keep things from going to hell.  
  
Had he ever had to do that to a TARDIS?   
  
A little round gage on the lower half of the pillar caught the Doctor’s attention. He knelt down and examined it with his lips pressed tightly together. “Soon as this hits red–” he tapped the gage with his fingers “–it activates. At this speed it’ll trigger–” He seized Jack’s wrist and pushed up the sleeve of his coat to have a look at his watch “–at two minutes past 8:00.”  
  
“The Toclafane will be here at 8:00,” Rose pointed out. “And two minutes pass and…then…”  
  
“But what could he possibly need this for?” Martha questioned. “What are the Toclafane going to do when this activates?”  
  
“More importantly, can you stop it?” Jack asked.  
  
The Doctor shook his head, rubbing his mouth in agitation. “Not until I know what it’s doing. Touch the wrong bit and blow up the solar system.” He exhaled through his teeth.   
  
“Never mind my family, then,” Martha said suddenly. “We’ve got to get to the Master.”  
  
“Right.” The Doctor jumped to his feet and held his hands out to Rose. She took them and he pulled her to her feet. “Come on.” He leaped over the pipes on the floor and headed for the door, pausing to throw a quick, apologetic look at the rotor, before he threw open the doors. Martha and Jack hurried after him but Rose lingered behind for a moment.   
  
She extended a hand towards the nearest coral strut but stopped just shy of contact. Even in the eerie red light, she could tell the strut wasn’t the healthy shade of brown it usually was. It was paler, hinting at yellow almost, and it might’ve even been thinner. ‘Cannibalized,’ the Doctor had said. She was literally making her own self sick and she couldn’t stop it.   
  
The urge to help her swelled within Rose and she focused in on the energy inside her, directing it to her hand with purpose. Her hand began to emit the light and she was just about to press it to the coral strut when the door opened again and the Doctor poked his head in.   
  
“Rose, why are–no don’t!” He rushed forward to stop her. He grabbed her wrist and she tried to jerk out of his grip.   
  
“Let go of me.”  
  
He covered her hand with his other one, letting his hand sink through the golden light. “You can’t help her,” he murmured, caressing her palm with his thumb. “She’s too far gone. She’ll drain you dry without even meaning to.”  
  
Rose shook her head but the fight had gone out of her. “I can’t just leave her like this.”   
  
“We have to.”  
  
“You didn’t feel it, Doctor. The pain. I think she’s still in it, maybe worse. Can’t you hear how sad she is?”  
  
“I hear her. But I can’t help her right now and if you try you’ll only hurt yourself. The only way we can help her is by finding out what she’s being used for and to do that we have go get to Master.”  
  
Rose swallowed and let the energy in her hand tapper off and disperse trough her body. The Doctor shifted his grip so he was holding her hand rather than gripping it and pulled her out of the TARDIS. Jack and Martha had made it halfway up the corridor before realizing they weren’t following. They waited impatiently for them to catch up, Jack glancing at his watching every few seconds.   
  
“First contact happens in two minutes,” Jack warned. “And we still don’t know where to go.”  
  
“Actually, yeah, we do. …I can sense the Master,” the Doctor admitted. “He’s not far.”  
  
They raced after the Doctor through the engineering corridors and up several flights of stairs. As the ascended, the ugly, grated floors, tinted lights, and machinery gave way to smooth hardwood and standard off-white lights. Rose figured they must’ve entered the area of the _Valiant_ meant for personnel. On the outside it resembled a large sea vessel for when the ship needed to be camouflaged beneath the ocean. Unless you had a submarine, you’d never be able to guess what was beneath the seemingly ordinary boat. Ingenious, really.   
  
The four of them slowed to a walk when the Doctor warned them of people ahead and then stopped entirely when they reached the end of the corridor. Another one ran perpendicular to it and they could hear the quiet murmur of voices from down the right side. The Doctor ever so carefully, peered around the corner. He took in what lay beyond and then withdrew.   
  
“The doors right around the corner. There’s a few soldiers,” he reported, “but they seem mostly interested in each other. Just keep your movements as steady as possible and, whatever you do, don’t speak.”  
  
Rose, the Doctor, Jack, and Martha slowly crept up the hallway towards an innocuous wooden door. The group of soldiers just beyond it paid them no mind. The closer they got to the door, however, Rose began to realize a huge flaw in the plan. They couldn’t open the door without being noticed by the soldiers and, more importantly, by the people inside.  
  
But it seemed like fate was on their side because at that moment, a man in a black suit approached from the other side of the soldiers. He opened the door to enter the room and the Doctor caught the door before it could shut and the four of them slipped inside to an empty space near the back of the room.  
  
It looked like an elaborate conference room. The walls and floors were mostly made of wood but there were four small alcoves lined with metal on either side of the room. A double-sided stairway lead up to a small platform where President Winters stood, addressing the cameras below. Behind him was an upper level where there were transparent screens, chairs, and what appeared to be control consoles for the ship itself. In the center of the main area was a large ovular glass table. Eleven people sat around it, including the Saxons.   
  
Harry and Lucy were very at ease compared to the others who sat stiffly with their hands folded on the table or in their laps. He was leaning back in his chair, legs stretched out in front of him, and he rather seemed to be enjoying listening to Winters’ speech.   
  
“For as long as man has looked to the stars,” said the President, “he has wondered what mysteries they hold. Now we know we are not alone.”  
  
Rose resisted the urge to snort. “He’s known for years, bet my life,” she hissed.  
  
“Shhh,” the Doctor breathed. “Listen. All I need to do is get my key around his neck and it’ll cancel out his perception. They’ll see him for real. It’s just hard to go unnoticed with everyone on red alert.”   
  
The Master was smiling, Rose noticed. She shivered, hating being this close to him. It was worse than being near Jack.  
  
“If they stop me…” The Doctor looked at Jack. “You’ve got a key.”  
  
“Yes sir,” Jack whispered with a nod.  
  
“I’ll get him,” Martha growled.   
  
Rose said nothing, clenching her gloved fists in agitation. Her nails would be digging painfully into her skin if not for the material between them. She wanted to rush forward and throttle the bastard. Everything he’d done. To the universe, to her, to the Doctor, to _the TARDIS_ –he deserved it. She could pardon him for everything else (well, not really) but what he’d done to the TARDIS was unforgivable. It was worse than murder. He deserved worse than murder.   
  
Though she knew that attempting to do something along the lines she was thinking would probably just get them all killed. That wouldn’t help anyone. So she held back. But inside her, a feral creature of time growled darkly, promising vengeance.  
  
From up on the stairs, Winters’ voice drew her attention once more. “I give you the Toclafane!” He gestured to the empty air behind him and, as if on cue, four metal spheres like the one on the news yesterday materialized one after the other. Everyone in the room reacted with something between shock and wonder except the four time travellers.  
  
They floated there, humming and buzzing intermittently, turning this way and that and seemed to take in the scene before them. Rose realized immediately that there was something off about them. As if they didn’t belong. Like they were out of their time.  
  
“My name is Arthur Coleman Winters,” he greeted formally. “President-Elect of the United States of America and designated representative of the United Nations. I welcome you to the planet Earth and its associated moon.”  
  
“You’re not the Master,” said one of the spheres in a male voice that had a strange echo to it.  
  
Rose inhaled sharply through her nose and glanced at the Doctor. He crept slowly around the table, glancing between the Toclafane and the Master. 20 feet.   
  
“We like the Mr. Master,” chimed a female sphere. Three of Toclafane swooped down towards President Winters, forming a loose circle. The other drifted silently off to the side.  
  
“We don’t like you,” added another male. They zipped up to the upper level.   
  
The President seemed taken aback. “I…can be Master, if you wish. I will accept mastery over you if that is God’s will.”  
  
Rose started to shake her head but caught herself at the last second. _No, no, quit while you can,_ she pleaded silently.   
  
“Man is stupid,” the second male Toclafane said.  
  
“Master is our friend,” declared the first.  
  
“Where’s my Master, pretty please?” pleaded the female.   
  
“Oh alright, then!” Harold Saxon said suddenly. “It’s me!” He jumped to his feet and turned towards the room, sweeping his arms out wide and laughed. “Ta-da! Sorry. Sorry, I have this effect. People just get obsessed. Is it the smile? Is it the aftershave? Is it the capacity to laugh at myself? I don’t know. It’s crazy!”  
  
“Saxon, what are you talkin’ about?” President Winters demanded.  
  
He turned, arms folded, suddenly completely serious. “I’m taking control, Uncle Sam. Starting with you.” He turned to the lone Toclafane who’d yet to say a word. “Kill him,” the Master commanded.   
  
The Toclafane zipped forward, long spikes shooting from its body, and shot a single red beam at the President. He only had time to scream once before his body was reduced to nothing.  
  
People screamed and dashed for the doors and Jack, Rose, and Martha had to scramble out of the way to avoid getting trampled. Thankfully no one seemed to notice them in their haste to get away. But before they could escape, the poor people found their exits blocked by the suits in the room and their guns. They scrambled away from the doors and cowered against the walls. The Master’s people followed, keeping their guns trained on them. The Master laughed as he beheld the scene before him and clapped his hands gleefully.   
  
Glancing at the Doctor, Rose saw him looking around, teeth gritted, with his hand on the rope around his neck indecisively.   
  
Saxon bounded up the stairs and Lucy followed him. He spun around, hands on the railing, and addressed the camera. “Now, then, peoples of the Earth, please attend carefully.”   
  
The Doctor yanked his key off and rushed forward but before Saxon could even order it three of the suited men were on him. Rose’s heart clenched in terror as he was wrestled to the ground and, swifter than ever before, her entire body felt like a livewire. The TARDIS hadn’t sung in her mind for months but she didn’t need it to know what was happening. It took Jack’s hands locked around her arms to stop her from rushing forward. Martha, seeing this, grabbed onto her as well, though Rose was sure her friend wouldn’t mind charging forward with her if it wouldn’t blow their cover.  
  
“We meet at last, Doctor!” the Master practically purred. “Oh, ho! I love saying that!”  
  
“Stop this!” the Doctor screamed. “Stop it now!”  
  
“As if a perception filter’s gonna work on me.” He swiveled his head up and looked directly at Rose, Martha, and Jack. “Oh, and look, it’s the girlie and the freaks.” Some of the people in the room followed his gaze and a handful of them jumped as they noticed the three extra people in the room for the first time. “Although, I’m not sure who’s who, to be honest.”  
  
Jack shot towards him, hand in his coat to draw his gun, but the Master beat him to it. He withdrew a strange metal device from his pocket and pointed it at the Captain. An unfamiliar hum filled the air and a single, yellow beam shot towards him. Jack screamed then just and dropped to the floor. Dead in less than second. Around them, people cried out in varying degrees of shock and horror.  
  
Martha let go of Rose and rushed towards Jack. She followed more slowly, keeping her eyes firmly on the Master. Should she try and draw her gun? Her jacket was zipped all the way and unzipping it alone would draw attention to her. At least right now no one knew she was armed. Maybe best to save it for later.  
  
“Laser screwdriver,” the Master said with a wink in the Doctor’s direction. “Who’d have sonic? And the good thing is, he’s not dead for long. I get to kill him again!”  
  
“Master, just calm down. Just look at what you’re doing,” the Doctor tried to reason. “Just stop. If you could see yourself…”  
  
The Master sighed and looked the cameras. The cameraman and woman were still manning their posts dutifully, though whether that duty was to the Master or to their profession remained to be seen. “Oh, do excuse me, little bit of personal business. Back in a minute. Let him go,” he told the guards.  
  
The Doctor yelped as he was shoved harshly to the floor. Rose started towards him but froze when the Master turned his gaze–and the laser screwdriver–on her. “Ah, ah, ah. Wait your turn, Miss Tyler. I’ll get to you soon enough. You–” he nodded to one of the gunmen “–keep your eye on her.”  
  
She heard the quiet rustle of clothing as the gunman swiveled around. “Bastard,” she spat at the Time Lord.  
  
He grinned cheerfully and looked down at the Doctor. “Feisty, isn’t she? And quite the fighter, too. Was she always that way?”  
  
“Leave her out of this,” the Doctor growled. “Just listen to me. It’s that sound, the sound inside your head. What if I could help?”  
  
“Oh, how to shut him up?” He mimed talking with his hand. “I know. Memory lane!” He sat down on the steps facing the Doctor. “Professor Lazarus. Remember him? And his genetic manipulation device?”  
  
It had been nearly three years ago for Rose but she remembered him. The old man who’d sought to be young again and had used some sort of sonic technology, only to be mutated horrifyingly. They’d stopped him again by using sonic waves against him. That had been the first time they met Martha’s family, and was the incident that had prompted her to remain with them.  
  
“Do you think that little Tish got that job merely by coincidence?” the Master asked scathingly. “I’ve been laying traps for you all this time. And If I can concentrate all that Lazarus technology into one little screwdriver…” He held up his screwdriver threateningly. He took a deep breath but then seemed to realize something and placed his chin in his hand. “But, ooh, if only I had the Doctor’s biological code. Oh, wait a minute. I do!”   
  
The Master leaped from his position on the stairs and rushed towards a table near the stairs. Rose looked at the man pointing the gun at her for a moment and, praying he wouldn’t find the action threatening, lunged towards the Doctor and dropped to her knees next to him. She breathed a sigh of relief when no gunshot followed and she gripped his arm tightly.   
  
“I’ve got his hand!” The Master declared and threw open a silver case she hadn’t noticed before. Inside was an only-too-familiar jar containing the Doctor’s hand inside the bubbling liquid. Rose’s stomach twisted. How many times had she stared at thing down in the Torchwood Hub before the Master had taken it with him? She’d forgotten the Master had it.   
  
“And if Lazarus made himself younger, what if I reverse it?” the Master asked. “Another hundred years?”  
  
“No!” Rose snarled and placed herself between the two Time Lords. “Don’t you dare hurt him or I _swear_ I’ll kill you.”  
  
The Master simply raised his eyebrows. “I have no problem hitting you with this. Except I don’t think you’ll survive it. How about it? Want to die a painful death in front of your precious Doctor?”   
  
Rose gritted her teeth and stared him down. She was dimly aware of the cameras trained on them as well as the man who had a gun pointed at her head. She uncurled her fists, already summoning the destructive power within her. She could do it. His arms, or maybe an arm and some internal organs…or maybe his head–plenty of things she could destroy that would cripple him.   
  
“I’ll kill you,” she repeated. The energy was racing through her body. Any second now she’d be able to take him down. But before she could do anything, the Doctor used his strength to literally toss her out of the line of fire. She rolled up into a crouch the moment she hit the floor and the Doctor’s screaming filled her ears.   
  
His body was convulsing and flailing about oddly as if he was being fast-forwarded while time remained steady around him.   
  
“STOP IT!” she screamed and sprang to her feet, only to feel a gun press against the nape of her neck. She froze.  
  
“Make one more move,” the man dared.   
  
Her eyes flicked between the two Time Lords desperately. Rose felt the familiar surge of power just a few feet away but thankfully the Doctor’s screaming drowned out Jack’s first gasp of life to everyone except the man standing right behind her. She felt the gun shift the tiniest amount as he turned to look and she seized the chance. She spun around, bringing her hand, glowing with her destructive power, up and she seized the gun. It evaporated into dust and in the split second it took the man to process what happened, she swung her other fist up. It connected with the side of his face and sent him sprawling to the floor. He did not rise.  
  
The room seemed to spin around her as her body reacted to the sudden loss of energy and by the Rose turned back around, the Doctor’s screams had finally ended. The Master lowered his screwdriver and the Doctor lay in a heap on the floor. His thick, unruly brown hair was gone, replaced by thin white strands that barely covered a fraction of what they once did. His skin was wrinkled and his entire body trembled. He slowly pushed himself up on his arms and Rose flung herself down to his side.  
  
“Doctor,” she whispered. He panted heavily, trying to sit up. She grasped his arm and shoulder and gently eased him up. He grasped her forearm tightly and familiar brown eyes stared at her from the face of an old man. “I’ve got you. I’m right here.”  
  
“Awww, would you look at these two? A Lord of Time and a human peasant: like something out of a fairytale. So cute.” He sneered at them.  
  
“Leave ‘em alone.” Martha Jones snapped from Jack’s side. The Master turned to her in surprise. “I mean it, leave ‘em.”  
  
Rose put her hand on the Doctor’s cheek and turned his face towards hers. She reached out with her mind, seeking his, but he either didn’t have the strength to initiate the link or he was choosing not to.   
  
“Are you going to make me?” the Master asked.  
  
“I just might.” Martha replied coldly.  
  
“Are you sure? Because…I’ve got something of yours. Or some _one_. Several someones, actually. And I’ve brought them all the way in from prison!” He gestured to the back of the room and she heard a door sliding open. Rose didn’t turn to look but from Martha’s gasp and the voices coming from behind, she guessed that the three captured Jones family were being shoved into the room.  
  
“Mum,” Martha whimpered.   
  
A moment later, the first male Toclafane asked, “Is it time?!”  
  
“Is it ready?” asked the second male.  
  
“Is the machine singing?” asked the female as the three metal monsters circled above the Master.  
  
He checked his watch and smiled darkly. “Two minutes past.” He glanced at the Doctor once more then bounded up the stairs to stand next to Lucy. Leaning his hands on the railing, he looked into the cameras. “So! Earthlings. Basically…um…end of the world.”  
  
The Doctor’s hand tightened around Rose’s arm and they glanced at each other.   
  
The Master raised his screwdriver into the air. “HERE. COME. THE DRUMS!” Out of nowhere, music began blaring over the speakers, repeating the same words the Master had just uttered: _here come the drums, here come the drums!_  
  
Rose felt the moment the paradox machine activated like a ripple through the air that stabbed like a million tiny pins against her skin. Beside her, the Doctor flinched as he, too, felt the change. Suddenly the air was just a bit too thick, the colors too dull, and the song playing over the speakers was just a bit too…slow. Or fast? She whimpered, clutching at her head with her hands and lowered it to the floor in an attempt to increase the blood flow.  
  
 _You are my voodoo child, my voodoo child_  
  
When her initial reaction to the sudden shift in time wore off a few seconds later, Rose raised her head. The first thing she saw was Lucy Saxon up on the platform above the first stairs. She was dancing, chewing a sweet in her mouth, with a giddy little smile on her face. Rose hissed softly and raised her hand. The rest of destructive energy she’d built up earlier flared from her palm. Lucy’s heels dissolved into dust and she stumbled, flailing wildly, and only just managed to catch herself on the railing.  
  
Rose’s head spun dizzily and it was only the sudden arrival of Martha that prevented her from hitting the floor face-first.   
  
“Sit…sit her up,” the Doctor wheezed.   
  
Martha shifted her grip and the Doctor grunted quietly as the two of them heaved her into a sitting position. Rose panted quietly and it was all she could do to not slump against the Doctor.  
  
“That was…stupid,” he whispered to her.   
  
“That bitch was dancing,” she muttered back. “World’s about to go to hell and she’s dancing…”  
  
The Doctor shook his head sadly and nudged her mind with his. She gave him a brief nod of consent and felt his mind slip into hers. _Doctor, what do we do?  
  
Nothing.   
  
What?  
  
There’s nothing we can do. Not now. You’ve got to get out of here. Martha has Jack’s manipulator. Take it and go. _  
  
Rose shook her head vehemently and hissed, “I can’t just leave you!”  
  
 _You can and you must._ The Doctor reached out his hand and quickly took the manipulator from Martha and fiddled with the coordinate dials. _This should take you down to the edge of London._ He handed the manipulator to her. _My brave, precious girl–you and Martha have to save the world. I can’t go with you; I’ll only slow you down like this. And Jack will give away your position._  
  
The music around them was abruptly and the Master’s voice, projected over the speakers. “Down you go kids!”  
  
Through the portholes and windows, Rose could see countless Toclafane streaking down from the sky towards the helpless planet below.   
  
“Remove one-tenth of the population!” The Master ordered his metal monsters.  
  
Rose glanced at Martha who was staring up at the bridge in horror and anger. Then at Jack lying prone on the floor a few feet away, watching the three of them. _But how? What do you expect us to do?_  
  
 _I’ve…got a plan. It’s a long shot but right now it’s our only chance._  
  
Rose listened as the Doctor telepathically explained what they would have to do and how long they would probably have to do it in. Her head was shaking slowly, tears dripping from her eyes onto their arms, and she couldn’t stop them. She’d just gotten him back. She couldn’t lose him again. She wouldn’t leave him here.  
  
 _You’ve got to! Please, Rose. If you stay, he’ll… Please. I can’t watch him kill you._ He stared pleadingly into her eyes and used his hand to wipe away the tears trickling from them.  
  
Messages were pouring in through the coms from UNIT bases around the world, all of them reporting the same things. Countless Toclafane slaughtering, none of their defenses or weapons working against them. They’d been completely unprepared for something on this scale and the Master, damn him, had known it. All those people…  
  
 _Please, Rose. Run._  
  
Rose took a deep, shaky breath, and leaned close, pressing her lips against his rough old ones. “I love you,” she whispered.   
  
She pushed herself to her feet and pulled Martha with her. For a moment, Martha’s eyes fell on her family standing in the back of the room. Rose followed her gaze. The three Joneses stood with guns to their heads, hands bound in front of them. Tish looked afraid and Francine and Clive stared sadly at their daughter. There was no way to help them; they’d have to remain onboard.  
  
Martha must’ve figured that out on her own, because without saying a word, she placed her hand over the manipulator Rose was holding. Rose looked down at Jack and he nodded encouragingly, even going so far as to wink at her. She looked at the Doctor who was staring at her intently, like he was trying to memorize her face.  
  
Rose took a deep breath and pressed the button to activate the manipulator. She felt the lurch of time being punched open for them and just before they were sucked in, she heard the Doctor’s whisper in her mind: _Be strong._  
  
And then they were gone. 


	61. Walk in the Shadows

  
Martha did the math during the first night as they hid out in an empty house somewhere to the East of London. There were no animals chattering. Not even the crickets chirped. It was as if the world was in shock from what had happened. All they could hear were the distant cries and gunshots from the town center where all the survivors had been, or were being herded. Huddled in the dark kitchen, Martha muttered three words, “Six hundred million.”  
  
Rose didn’t even need to ask her what she meant. It only took the Toclafane an hour to complete their orders. _“Eliminate one-tenth of the population.”_ There were six billion people in the world, and one tenth of that was six hundred million. _Six hundred million people_ …killed within the span of an hour. Even after all she’d seen, she found it difficult to process. How could so many people just be gone? It was worse than any war Earth had ever seen, the bloodiest massacre in history.   
  
They’d chosen this house because its residents were lying dead in the front yard. After trying three other houses and finding at least one corpse in each, they decided to try their luck in a house that had dead people on the lawn. It had paid off. A thorough search of the house had revealed no additional corpses. Rose couldn’t help but think of the five people–two parents, a teenage son and daughter, and a little girl no older than five–who lay dead in the yard as she searched their rooms for things to keep her alive.   
  
  
They’d set up camp in the kitchen where they would have easy access to the water as well as the refrigerator. The power was still working, so the food in there was safe for the time being. They loaded the nonperishable food–several cans of fruit and vegetables, one of ravioli, granola bars, crisps, a box of cereal, trail mix, beef jerky–into one of two sturdy brown backpacks they found upstairs, along with a can opener and a few pieces of silverware. The other backpack they left empty for a torch, batteries, two blankets, and anything else they thought they might need.  
  
They’d made a small bed in the kitchen from sofa pillows and cushions and the duvet from the parent’s room upstairs. Not entirely trusting their perception filters, Rose suggested they take turns keeping watch, and volunteered to take the first one. She wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway. Time felt strange around her. It was like the air just a bit too thick, but the space around her was emptier than it should be. Every so often she would feel an itch somewhere on her skin, but no matter how much she scratched, nothing helped. Martha eventually had to stop her because she was starting to bleed.  
  
Rose did not sleep that first night or the second. They spent the days entirely on the move, heading further away from London. The Doctor said they had to spread the word, but at this point it was probably best to just lay low and wait until the new world order was established and learn how it worked. _Then_ they could begin their mission.   
  
The further away from London they got, they fewer Toclafane they saw. Martha reckoned they were herding everyone into the towns and cities for some sort of census. As much as they wanted to know what was going on, they agreed it would be better to find their information away from London just in case their perception filters were penetrated. No doubt the Master wanted them back and had ordered his people to watch out for them.   
  
On the third evening, they encountered their first group of rogue humans who’d managed to escape the Toclafane’s initial roundups. There were two men, a young woman, a teenage girl, an elderly woman, and two children–all of them armed–scavenging for food in a petrol station. Neither Martha nor Rose wanted to approach them in case they reacted with hostility or violence. So instead, the two women stood outside the building in the shadow of a pump, and simply watched the five people round up what they could stuff into their packs and pockets.  
  
At one point, it seemed the smallest of the children–a girl, by the look of her, but it was difficult to tell since most of the child’s head was hidden beneath a large beanie–could see them standing out there by the pumps. She stared at them for a long minute, squinting and shifting her head from side to side like she was trying to make sense of what she was seeing. She probably would’ve eventually seen through it if one of the men hadn’t snapped at her. Rose and Martha used the distraction to duck behind the pump.  
  
When they were gone, Martha and Rose moved in. They set up in the back near the coolers. Rose had barely curled under her blanket, and dropped her head onto her balled up jacket before she was out cold. Two days of tension and strenuous exercise with no sleep was more than her body could handle. Next thing she knew it was morning, and Martha was bringing her a bowl of cereal and some bananas. Before giving them to her, however, the med student extracted a promise that there would be no more going days without sleeping.   
  
If they weren’t on the run with the world gone to hell around them, it would’ve almost been monotonous. Hours and hours of walking almost nonstop. They found a pair of bikes at noon on day four and decided to risk travelling on the roads for the sake of moving faster. They had no idea where they were most of the time, only that they were still heading northeast. They spent a lot of time talking, Martha taking the opportunity to ask Rose about her time with Torchwood. Rose readily supplied her with story after story about aliens, her coworkers, or just silly things that happened. It was better than silence.   
  
Silence left them plenty of time to think about their situation, or those they’d left behind. If they dwelled on either for too long they might go mad.  
  
By day five, Martha began to notice something that could become problematic very soon. The roots in Rose’s hair had already been showing through when they’d found her in Torchwood, but now they’d reached the point where they really needed to be touched up. She waited until they were walking down the street in a small village before bringing it up.   
  
“This is hardly the time for vanity, Martha,” Rose admonished.   
  
“No, but you stand out like this. What if… There’s a chemist just over there.” She gestured with her thumb. “They might have hair dye.”   
  
Rose considered for a moment. The Master would probably have given orders to look for a black woman and a blonde. If she changed her hair color it definitely would give them a bit more obscurity. So they hurried across the street to the chemist and Rose spent the next fifteen minutes looking through the selection of hair dyes and comparing them to find the one that was closest to her natural color. They dyed it in the restroom in the back of the store and ate lunch while they waited for the color to finish sitting. Once that was done, they each took turns using the sink to wash up. They entertained the idea of using some of the makeup that remained virtually untouched on aisle five. But what was the point? No one could see them anyway.  
  
All things considered, they did quite well for that first week. They saw a handful of other humans hiding out but they didn't approach any of them. For the most part, though, the Toclafane and soldiers had done a good job of rounding everyone up. They spent the sixth day on the edge of a town square listening as a group of soldiers addressed the population. They were requesting those with any special skills or trades to come forward for assignments suited to their talents. Mostly doctors, nurses, former or currently enlisted soldiers, and scientists came forward and they were led away to be “assessed”, whatever that meant. Everyone else was informed their assignments would come soon enough.  
  
Then on the seventh day as they were creeping around the edges of a town, they spotted a hunting and camping supplies store. After checking to make sure there were no soldiers or metal balls whizzing about, they eagerly hurried up the road to the store. The windows had been smashed and glass littered the inside. They carefully stepped over the broken glass, and then looked around at the smorgasbord of supplies before them. A lot of the stock was missing which meant people had already come to gather materials to hide out in the wilds.  
  
They picked their way through the store and what supplies were left. Most of the weapons were long gone but Rose found a pair of multitools which she tucked into her pocket as well as a folding knife buried beneath a pile of camouflage hats. They found some camouflage shirts and readily swapped them for the dirty ones they’d been wearing for over a week. They also swapped the backpacks they’d found the first night for sturdier ones intended for camping trips with a lot more pockets. They found a set of outdoor cooking utensils–a pot, skillet, and two rings each containing a knife, fork, and spoon–as well as a collapsible grate, two packs of fire starters, and a case of matches.  
  
“We’re not gonna be able to sleep inside every night,” Rose pointed out. They also decided grabbing a tent and some bug spray would be useful for those times as well.  
  
About halfway through their search, Rose heard a loud humming sound that turned her blood to ice. “Toclafane!” she gasped.   
  
Martha dropped the box she was holding and looked around wildly. “Behind the counter, quick!” She hissed, abandoning her backpack, and raced to the front of the store. Rose was right behind her. They hefted themselves up and over the counter, dropping down behind, and pressed themselves firmly against the wall.   
  
Rose pressed her hand firmly over Martha’s mouth to muffle her breathing and they waited in tense silence as the droning became louder and separated into a pair of nearly identical hums. They were inside. The women listened as they flew slowly around the shop, checking for any humans.   
  
Then a female voice cooed, “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”  
  
Martha inhaled sharply and Rose shot her a warning look. They had their perception filters on. They’d be fine as long as they didn’t draw attention to themselves. Though she still had to mash her lips firmly together and resist the urge to whimper when the Toclafane floated over the counter to have a look behind it. There was a tense moment as it turned this way and that, but then it finally gave up and moved on.  
  
“I don’t think they want to come out,” said the other Toclafane, also female.   
  
“Let’s blow it up, then.”   
  
Martha gasped again and they exchanged horrified looks. Not caring about whether or not they were seen, the moment the Toclafane left the building they launched themselves up and over the counter and tore up the aisle toward the rear exit. Rose burst through the door and it hit the wall with a loud BANG. They raced across the alleyway and met a chain-link fence separating the store’s property from the woods. Rose hefted herself up and over it, landing in a crouch. Martha had barely made it over when the shop suddenly exploded.  
  
Rose was knocked face-first into the dirt from the force rippling out of the building, and her body screamed in protest from the rush of heat. The world around them shuddered from the aftershocks as Rose raised her head. Craning her neck, she saw the burning ruins of the camping supply store and realize with horror that they’d left their backpacks–with all their supplies–inside. People were screaming nearby and she heard Martha groan quietly next to her. The two Toclafane who’d blown up the building had already been joined by two more. More would probably come soon, drawn in by the explosion.  
  
“Get up,” Rose gasped as she pushed herself to her knees. Her back and left wrist screamed in protest but she knew any damage to it was already being taken care of. “We gotta go. Martha, get up!” She glanced over her shoulder again; there were five. “They’re coming.”  
  
Martha slowly pushed herself to her knees and Rose grabbed her shoulders, helping her up the rest of the way. With another look back at the Toclafane–seven now–they walked as quickly as they could towards the trees. Martha had a limp, Rose noted grimly. That meant she’d have to heal her and they’d just lost their food.   
  
“Ow, ow, ow,” Martha whimpered as she was forced to put all her weight on her right foot to get over a large root in their path.  
  
“Just a bit further,” Rose told her. “Then I’ll heal you.”   
  
Martha nodded stiffly. “All our supplies…” she said mournfully.  
  
“We’ll worry about that later.” ...Though she was already worrying about them. They should’ve kept their bags with them. They were probably what had tipped the Toclafane off to begin with. Now they had nothing but the clothes on their backs and the contents of their pockets. She was glad, at least, that she’d been wearing Jack’s manipulator on her wrist instead of keeping it one of the bags or else it’d be long gone. He would never have forgiven her for that.  
  
When they were a quarter of a mile into the woods, Rose found a sturdy tree with a nice gap in the roots for Martha to sit in and then she lowered her friend to the ground.  
  
“Okay, tell me what hurts,” Rose ordered.  
  
“Ankle,” Martha muttered. “Landed on it funny. Think it’s just a sprain.”  
  
Rose carefully removed Martha’s boot and sock and ran her fingers across the foot. “Anything else?”   
  
“Cut my knee on the fence.” Rose nodded to herself, but before she had the chance to start, Martha stopped her. “Wait. Are you–I mean–can you–without passing out?”  
  
“I should be fine. This isn’t anything major. But you’re still probably going to have to go back and find me food.”   
  
“Deal.”  
  
She reached for the healing energy inside her–somewhat depleted from healing herself–and made it flow down to her hand. She placed her glowing palm on Martha’s ankle and her perception expanded throughout her body. Heart rate elevated and breathing unsteady–normal considering the circumstances–bruising on her abs from impact, a thin cut in her knee (probably from the fence), and a tear in the ligament in her right ankle. She worked her finger through the rip in Martha’s jeans to touch the cut on her knee. She clotted the blood and gave the skin cells the tiny boost they needed to heal right up. The ligaments took a little longer to coax back together, but she managed even though her head was swimming dangerously. She drew back, letting the energy taper off, and she exhaled in a quick puff. Rose leaned forward onto her hands and took a few deep breaths.   
  
Martha wiggled her foot around to test it and gave her knee a quick once-over. “You’re a little scary with that,” she informed her.   
  
Rose smiled feebly. “You should’ve been there when I had to heal Owen.”  
  
“What happened to him?”  
  
“Got his throat ripped out by a weevil.”  
  
Martha winced.   
  
“Can y’stand?”  
  
Martha swiped her tongue across her lips and bent her knee, pressing down on her foot experimentally. “Think so,” she reported. She rolled onto her knees and used the tree trunk to steady herself as she got to her feet. She shifted her weight on and off her foot for a few seconds and then nodded once. “Scary. Alright, what about you? Can you walk?”  
  
Rose wiggled her feet experimentally and was pleased when her body didn’t protest. “Yeah.” But, then, when she thought about how long it had been since they’d properly eaten, she knew going forward wasn’t a good idea. “But I won’t get very far. I need to eat.”   
  
Martha muttered something under her breath and looked in the direction they’d come from. She was quiet for a minute. “What do you need to get yourself going quickly?”  
  
“Protein and vitamin C the most. Nuts and fruit are really good. Dunno if you’ll find any cheese left since the power’s out, but if you can. Eggs… Vitamin waters would probably help. And any of those meal replacement shakes or bars.”  
  
“Got it. You stay here.”  
  
Rose nodded and scooted into the small space where Martha had been sitting moments before. She shifted around to get comfortable then pulled her knees up to her chest. The movement called attention to the items in her jacket pockets and she recalled suddenly two of the things she’d pocketed back in the store. She sifted through the pocket and pulled out the multitool and the knife, handing them to Martha.  
  
“Smart move,” Martha commented as she tucked the multitool the pocket of her trousers and the knife into her bra. “I’ll be back soon.”  
  
“Good luck.” Her friend smiled at her once more before setting off. Rose listened to the sound of Martha’s footsteps growing fainter and fainter until they faded altogether. Then there was nothing but the wind through the leaves, the chatter and shrieks of animals, and the occasional hum of bugs buzzing nearby. She kept her ears peeled for the telltale sound of an approaching Toclafane.  
  
She must’ve dozed at some point during the wait because the next thing she knew, it was nighttime and she could feel something warming her skin. Opening her eyes, she saw a small fire going a few feet away with a battered grate resting over it. Martha sat next to it with a small skillet in her hands and a light blue backpack at her side. Rose shifted around, noting the aches in her muscles from lying still for so long. There was a sheet draped over her as well.   
  
Noticing the movement, Martha glanced over, saw she was awake and smiled. “Found you some eggs.” She held up the skillet which Rose noticed seemed a bit lopsided, as if part of it had started to melt. “And some protein bars and trail mix. We’ll have to share those, though. Most of the houses were occupied or had already been raided. I was lucky to find what I did. Picked my way through the remains of the store, too, once they’d cooled down. Couldn’t find our packs–big surprise–but I found a few things. No silverware, though.”  
  
Rose smiled. “Nice job.” Then she finally realized how hungry she was and her smile twisted into a grimace. Martha plucked a deformed metal lump that somewhat resembled a cup from backpack and used it to scoop pieces of the fried eggs out of the skillet. Setting the skillet down, she scooted over to Rose who accepted the cup gratefully. And while she was busy inhaling the eggs, Martha unwrapped two protein bars and opened a bottle of water for her as well.  
  
“It’s almost not worth it,” Martha remarked as Rose ate.  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“Your power, I mean. What good is it if it leaves you weak?”  
  
“Some things can’t be recovered from, at least not quickly enough.” Rose took a bite of the protein bar, chewed quickly, and swallowed. “If I hadn’t healed your foot then we’d never get anywhere. I can bounce back from this no problem. It’s worth it.”  
  
“But what if you can’t? What happens if you drain yourself too much?”  
  
Rose paused mid-chew, cocking her head to the side. She’d be lying if she said that had never crossed her mind, but did she really want Martha fretting over that? Oh, hell, she’d probably figure it out on her own anyway. “Suspect I’d die.”   
  
“Oh, that’s great. Hi Doctor. I’m sorry I let your girlfriend die. How did it happen? Oh, she drained herself healing some knob who got himself hurt.” She scowled. “That’ll go over well.”  
  
“Well, then, I’ll just have to make sure I don’t do that.”  
  
Rose took a longer time recovering. Normally all it took was some rest and food, and she was back on her feet within an hour or so. Maybe it was how little food she’d consumed, maybe it was because they were in the middle of a earth-shattering paradox, or maybe it was something else altogether. Regardless, the problem still remained and it was well after nine before she was confident enough to stand. And they weren’t able to make it more than a few kilometers before she had to rest and eat some trail mix.   
  
Around four am, Martha decided they should probably just stop and get some sleep. Judging by the number of stars they could see through the canopy above them, they were miles from any towns or cities. Assuming the power was on. They laid one sheet on the ground so they wouldn’t have to sleep right on the grass and dirt, and used the other sheet for warmth. Rose volunteered to sit guard since she wasn’t sleepy, just tired, and insisted there was a difference.   
  
Martha awoke seven hours later to find Rose fast asleep next to her. But they were both still alive and all their stuff was intact so she couldn’t be too mad. She waited until noon to wake her up and after rolling their sheets and stowing them in the light blue pack, they set out east once more, munching on a single protein bar each.   
  
The long, uninterrupted sleep had done her good. Rose was moving steadily and color had finally returned to her cheeks. But Martha was worried. It had taken hours for her to recover from something as small as healing a cut and a sprain and whatever minor injuries she’d sustained. If it was going to be like this from now on, her abilities could really prove to be more of a burden than an asset. She seriously hoped the sluggishness was because of her lack of food. In which case, they would have to make sure they always had enough on-hand in case she needed to heal.   
  
They were down to two protein bars and the bag of trail mix now. They’d have to find more food today.   
  
And a map. They _really_ needed a map.  
  
Gradually the trees began to thin out and they eventually left the forest behind to continue on through open fields. Farmlands, Martha realized, as the ground beneath her feet became marked with plow tracks. That meant there had to be a farmhouse nearby. Rose spotted it first, about half a mile to the north of their location: a two-story house, garage, and a barn. It took them ten minutes of walking to reach it.   
  
They stood at the entrance to the drive and stared up at the house. There were two possibilities: either the house was empty or it wasn’t. They couldn’t hear any animals in the barn, which meant they’d either died, or there weren’t any in there at all. The latter was more likely since the stink of death wasn’t hanging in the air. No movement inside the house, either.  
  
“Should we risk it?” Martha asked.  
  
“We need food and water,” Rose replied.   
  
“Yeah, but if there’s people inside, then they need it, too. Do you really wanna risk killing someone just for food?”  
  
“N-no, but…this might be the only house for miles. At least if there’s people inside they may be able to point us in the direction of the nearest town. We gotta at least try.”  
  
Martha considered it for a moment. “You got that gun?”  
  
“’Course.”  
  
“Good.”   
  
Rose unzipped her jacket, removing the handgun from its holster at her waist. She checked the ammunition then returned it to its holster. Satisfied, Martha nodded once and they headed up the drive together.   
  
They tried the front door first. Locked. The back door, the cellar door, and all of the windows, too–locked up good and tight. There were no broken windows on the upper story, either, which meant no Toclafane had broken in. Martha was seriously beginning to suspect that there was someone inside the house, and if not the house, then the barn or the garage.   
  
She circled the house once more and found Rose at the front door again. She motioned her up onto the porch insistently. Martha glanced around and crept up the stairs to her. Rose lifted two fingers and held them out towards her at a slight angle–her silent way of asking for permission to use telepathy. Martha bit back a sigh and nodded once. Apparently, her mind wasn’t very heavily guarded, and therefore very easy for Rose to access. This was not the first time she’d asked to use telepathy for communication and it really was dead useful. But that didn’t mean she liked it. At least she knew Rose wouldn’t go poking about in her head.  
  
She could feel her there, a warm spot on the edge of her mind. Not invasive, not annoying, simply present. _Don’t waste time searching the entire house._ Rose’s voice flitted through her mind and she had to resist the urge to flinch. _We find the kitchen, get some food, and we get the hell out._   
  
Martha nodded. This telepathy thing was a one-way street. She didn’t know how to talk back, or, rather, put her own thoughts into Rose’s head. Hell, she didn’t even know if she could. She wasn’t telepathic and Rose never went far enough into her mind to hear what she was thinking.   
  
_I’m gonna keep us linked._  
  
Martha furrowed her brow in confusion.  
  
 _It will let me know if you’re in trouble. I’ll explain later._  
  
She nodded once.  
  
Rose pulled the glove off her right hand, inhaled slowly through her nose, and pressed her fingers against the crevice between the door and the frame where the deadbolt was. At first her skin seemed to shine and then the golden light seeped out of her skin and filled the space around her hand.  
  
Martha frowned the tiniest bit. She’d never say it aloud, but Rose’s unearthly powers unnerved her. She’d always been a bit odd, always had those weird little quirks and connection to the sentient ship they lived in, but this went beyond that. This was more than just pains and tingles because of something around them; she was using some supernatural force to influence things. And it was scary, the things she could do…and the untapped potential waiting there. If it weren’t for the toll her powers took on her, she could end up being very, _very_ dangerous.  
  
A moment later the light died and she drew her hand back. Martha put her hand on her shoulder just in case but Rose didn’t even wobble.   
  
_Destroying things is so much easier than fixing them_. The quiet thought trickled through Martha’s mind and she shivered once. Rose slipped her glove back on then reached for the handle, turning it, and pulled the door open.   
  
Directly inside the door was a small foyer complete with a coat rack and a large wicker basket, its lid propped just barely open by a child’s tiny sandal that had missed its destination in a moment of carelessness. Or perhaps displaced in the desperate flurry to grab shoes appropriate for escaping. Martha carefully entered the house, expecting someone to rush out at her at any moment. No one came and she let out a breath she’d hardly been aware of holding. Rose crossed the threshold, shutting the door behind her, and together they surveyed the house.   
  
To right of the foyer was a staircase leading up to the second level, and on the left, a door leading into a living room. A can of beer sat on the table in front of the tan couch that was missing all its cushions. She frowned at it for a few seconds, trying to figure out what was so different about it, before shaking her head and continuing her inspection. Opposite of the front door was a small hallway lined with pictures that led into what appeared to be a dining room. The walls were a plain off-white, only a shade lighter than the exterior of the house, and most of the hardwood floors were well trodden or covered by worn rugs.   
  
Martha advanced slowly down the hall, wincing every time the floor creaked under her or Rose’s feet. Like it made any difference. If there was anyone inside they would’ve probably heard the door open.   
  
_He’s going to destroy the world._ Rose mumbled in her mind and she stiffened in surprise but kept going. _Makes you wonder how we’re gonna fix it with just words._  
  
Yeah, it did. The Doctor’s plan, it…well, to be honest, it was a textbook long shot. The definition of ‘one in a million’. But it was all they had.  
  
Martha was pleased to find that the dining room was connected right to the kitchen, separated only by an island that extended from the wall. She glanced at Rose then the two of them rushed around the wooden table into the kitchen. The refrigerator was missing its telltale hum so there was no point in looking in there. They flitted through the cupboards, sorting through cans and boxes. Canned fruits and vegetables mostly, some beans, a few of tuna. They took one of each. Rose found a loaf of bread and loaded it into the bag immediately. Martha found several boxes of crisps and biscuits already opened. She removed the clip off of one of the potato crisp bags and removed one, tossing it in her mouth experimentally.  
  
The salty taste exploded on her tongue and she smiled happily. They were only a little stale and definitely worth the space. She closed it back up and tossed it to Rose. She went through the same process with the other bags and boxes she was interested in keeping, while Rose rummaged through the drawers. She found a roll of tape and a ball of rubber bands, which she tucked into the side pockets of the light blue backpack.  
  
 _We really need another bag._ Rose said in her mind. _I’m going to see if I can find anything upstairs. Keep looking. See if you can find any bottled water._  
  
Martha glanced her way and nodded then continued tasting the chips.  
  
Rose left the backpack with Martha and headed back towards the staircase in the foyer. She spared the pictures on the wall a passing glance. A blonde man, a dark-haired woman, and a little girl with long brown hair were featured in most of them. Where were they now?  
  
She put her hand on the post at the bottom of the stairs and swung herself around. She ascended the stairs slowly, mindful of the creaking boards. At the top of the stairs, the hallway branched off in two directions, one longer than the other. The short hallway had two doors: an open one that led into a bathroom and a closed one that was too narrow to be anything but a cupboard, probably full of linens considering its proximity to the loo. The other way had five doors, two of them open and the others shut. Sunlight streamed through the doors open to the west. She waited for any sign of movement or a flicker of a shadow.   
  
When nothing happened, she carefully proceeded down the hall. She looked in the open doors first. One was full of boxes, a storage room. The other was furnished sparingly, just enough to be homey, and the simple bed was covered in a yellow duvet–a guest room. She gave the storage room a quick once-over but the boxes were mostly filled with decorations and one contained old toys. Nothing useful.   
  
Opening the door across the hall from the guest room revealed a small office, complete with a computer and printer. She rummaged through the desk drawers and procured a few pens, a pad of paper, and a pair of scissors. Other than that there was nothing of any real value. No backpacks or suitcases. Not even a briefcase.   
  
Just as she was leaving the office, she heard it: a small thud and the tiniest cry of pain. Not Martha. It was too young and too close.   
  
She checked her link to Martha’s mind, still intact, thankfully–she’d had plenty of practice with telepathic communication over distances but she sometimes struggled to maintain the link–and sent a quick warning to her. _Someone’s upstairs._ She felt a flash of panic from Martha’s end. _Don’t come up here. Just get ready to run. I’m gonna investigate._  
  
Rose set the supplies she’d scavenged on the ground outside the door and surveyed the hall. Two doors remained unopened. One at the far end and one just next to the guest room and unless she was mistaken, the cry had come from the latter. She took a deep breath and crossed the hall, carefully gripping the handle. She didn’t have to open it. She didn’t have to know who was inside. She could leave now with Martha and no one would get hurt. Except, maybe, whoever was inside, since they’d be absconding with their food supply, unless they left some behind. But what she heard hadn’t been a cry of fear. It had been pain. Rose sighed in defeat and opened the door slowly.   
  
The walls were a soft green and the drapes the color of the sky that the duvet and pillows on the twin-sized bed matched. A wooden bookcase in the corner had been painted the same shade as drapes and the vanity matched the walls. Pictures of flowers and butterflies hung from the walls and the. Another bookcase rested against the opposite wall, its shelves lined with an array of toys.   
  
It was the little girl’s bedroom.  
  
And the little girl herself was peeking out from the far side of the bed, eyes wide with terror. She was about eleven, her pretty brown hair twisted into twin braids that had mostly fallen loose.  
  
 _It’s a kid._ Rose sent to Martha. “Hello,” she greeted softly. The girl said nothing. Rose took a step into the room and the girl whimpered loudly, flinching away.   
  
“St-stay away!” the girl stuttered. She winced, face contorting with pain.  
  
“It’s okay. I’m not gonna hurt you. On my life, I swear.” She held her hands up and took another step forward. “You look like you’re in pain already. I can help you.”  
  
The girl looked her up and down, eyes lingering on the gun at her waist. “I heard you downstairs. You’re stealing our food,” she accused. She had a thick Northern accent, like Rose’s first Doctor. They must be farther north than she’d thought.  
  
Rose had no defense for that so she nodded. “We’ve been traveling for days and we lost most of our food while we were escaping the Toclafane.”  
  
“We need to eat, too.”  
  
Rose cocked her head, acknowledging this, and then pressed her lips together pensively. She took another step forward, careful to keep her distance from the bed. The girl watched her like a hawk. When she got far enough around she was able to see the little girl fully. She wore a long dark blue skirt, a white t-shirt; a sock on her right foot and her left foot, swollen and bruised, was wrapped in ace bandages.   
  
“What happened?” Rose asked.   
  
“I…think I broke it,” the girl admitted after a moment. “Can’t exactly go to the doctor, though.”  
  
Rose scraped her teeth across her bottom lip pensively. She couldn’t just leave the poor kid like this. When the soldiers and the Toclafane found this farm–and it was when, not if–they would search inside the house for people and unless she was very, very lucky, they would find her. Healthy, she stood a chance of being kept alive. Injured, they would kill her. They’d already killed six hundred million; one child more wouldn’t make any difference to them.   
  
Slowly, she walked towards the girl, removing the glove from her right hand as she went. The girl watched her warily but didn’t move or scream. Rose knelt down in front of her and brushed her fingers across the base of her toes along the edges of the purple bruising.   
  
“What’s your name?”  
  
“Callie.”  
  
“Would you like me to fix this up for you, Callie?”  
  
Callie blinked in surprise. “Well, uh, yeah. I mean, if you can, that’d be great. But how…?”  
  
Rose inhaled slowly through her nose, focusing on the power inside, and directed it down through her hand. Worming her fingers underneath the ace wrap, Rose pressed her hand firmly against the top of Callie’s foot. The little girl stiffened, fisting her hands in her duvet, and let out a yelp at the pressure.   
  
“What are you doing?!” she wailed.  
  
“Helping,” Rose promised as her perception expanded through Callie’s entire body. Heart rate elevated, no doubt a reaction to the pain, and her breathing was a bit unsteady, but otherwise her vitals were fine. She focused on the injured foot and the damage to it. Three out of five of the long bones in the middle of her foot had been broken in two and the other bones had small cracks in in them.  
  
The poor thing, how had she managed this? She had to be taking something otherwise the pain would be unbearable.   
  
Shutting her eyes, Rose went to work, mending each bone one at a time. She did her best to ensure the areas around the breaks were not left weak but reinforcing bone wasn’t a task she really could devote much energy to. She soothed the tension in nearby muscles and tendons so she’d be able to move her foot around without any residual pain.  
  
Just before she began to retreat, she heard a shotgun cock and panicked, abruptly severing the connection between herself and the girl as she twisted around. Burning pain flared in her hand as the energy attempting to leave her abruptly met a dead end. She hissed in pain, jerking her hand close to her chest as she turned. But the hasty movement was too much and her head spun dizzily. She felt her shoulder hit the edge of the bed and she stared blearily up at the blurry figure in the doorway.  
  
“Get away from my daughter!”  
  
He loomed over them with the shotgun pointed directly at her head. He took a step towards her menacingly and she was able to see him clearly. Tall and blonde, wearing dark jacket and jeans: the man from the photographs downstairs. And he was furious.  
  
“Get away from her or I swear–”  
  
“Da, wait!” Callie cried. “She helped me!”  
  
“What?”  
  
She heard Callie shifting around behind her, probably testing out her foot. “It doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s just stopped! Look!” Something thumped lightly against the ground over and over. “It doesn’t hurt! She made it better!”  
  
The man’s eyes flicked between his daughter and Rose for a moment and then he lowered the gun. Rose exhaled in relief and rested her head against the edge of the bed. She felt a pair of small hands on her shoulder and Callie’s face slipped into her field of vision.  
  
“Thank you! Are you alright?”  
  
“I will be.” Rose assured her. She glanced up at the man standing over her and behind him at Martha standing in the doorway briefly before returning her eyes to him. “Though I really could do with some food.”  
  
“You were swipin’ our food before you came up here,” Callie pointed out as she started to get to her feet.  
  
“Careful. I haven’t had much experience mending broken bones. You might still be a bit weak.”  
  
“I’ll be okay. Hey!” Callie shot her a look. “Don’t change the subject.”  
  
She sighed. “Consider it a trade, then?” Rose suggested. She glanced at Martha again. “I healed you, now I get some food to replenish the energy I used to do it.”  
  
Callie shifted her weight from foot to foot gingerly and wiggled her toes. “Callie, sit on the bed,” her father ordered, and she did. He set his gun down on the opposite side from Rose and knelt in front of his daughter, and ran his fingers across her healed foot, pressing down intermittently. She didn’t even wince. The man shook his head slowly in disbelief before turning his gaze to Rose. “How?”  
  
“It’s…just something I can do.”  
  
He quirked one eyebrow. “Why?”  
  
“I couldn’t just leave her like that, not when I could help her.”   
  
The man considered her for a moment and then a smile slowly spread across his face and he extended his hand. “Jonah.” She took it and he helped her to stand. “I reckon we owe you a meal…and a place to sleep for the night, if you want.”  
  
“Thank you.” Rose said with a smile. “But, ah, could you make that for two?”  
  
“Two?” he demanded.  
  
From the doorway, Martha cleared her throat loudly, shattering the perception filter around her. Jonah jumped half a foot in the air and spun around. She smiled nervously, waving once. “Hi.”   
  
Rose couldn’t see Jonah’s face but from the way Martha pressed her lips together to hide a smile, she imagined it was quite comical.   
  
~*~  
  
There was no electricity in the house and building a fire outside could’ve attracted attention so they had to cook in the barn. Jonah had set up a little cooking area in one of the empty stalls a few days prior, when the power had first gone out. Nothing much, just a grill grate over a small fire pit, but it did the job, he said. Jonah and Martha worked for an hour to make a hot meal while Callie and Rose waited nearby.   
  
“You were the two women on the _Valiant_ ,” Jonah said later that evening as the four of them sat against the walls with bowls of clam chowder in their laps, warm toast balanced on their knees, and warm mugs of tea beside their legs.  
  
Martha froze with the spoon halfway to her mouth then lowered it back to the bowl cradled in her other hand, and glanced at Rose who was studying the man critically, weighing her answer. “Interesting assumption.”  
  
“More I looked at you earlier, more I swore you was familiar. It’s your hair that’s been throwing me off, but I recognize you now. We were watching when it happened, just like the rest of the world. You were there. And just before that, you were listed on the news as terrorists.”  
  
“And if we were?” she asked stiffly.   
  
He shrugged and took a bite of the chowder. “No need to get all defensive. Just makin’ an observation.”  
  
Rose relaxed and went back to her food. Martha let out a tiny sigh of relief and lifted the spoonful of soup up to her mouth. Clam chowder, not her favorite, but food was food.   
  
“Mind, you seemed to know who he was. You all had that ‘old enemies’ vibe going on.”  
  
“You could say that,” Martha muttered around her spoon.  
  
“Is he your archenemy?” Callie asked with a gleam of delight in her eye.   
  
Rose sighed and crossed her legs, setting the bowl in the small space in her lap. “Not ours. The Doctor–the tall man in the suit, the one who got… _aged_ –” she said the word like it was a curse “–up there on the _Valiant_ ; he’s his archenemy. It’s been that way for centuries. I only recently became a part of it. And Martha wasn’t really involved until about a week ago.”  
  
Jonah pointed at her with his spoon. “Did you say centuries?” he said around a mouth full of soup. Rose nodded. “But–how? Who is he? And who are you?”  
  
At first, Rose didn’t answer. She dipped her spoon into the chowder and lifted it to her mouth. As she did, she lifted her fore and middle finger together, and glanced at Martha. She jerked her head down once and Rose’s mind slipped into hers.  
  
 _The Doctor did tell us to tell everyone about him. We’ve been keeping away from people so far. Time for a trial run?_  
  
Well, they had to start somewhere. Martha nodded once.   
  
_Okay. Chime in whenever._  
  
Rose withdrew from her mind and addressed Jonah. “Harold Saxon is the identity created by a homicidal alien psychopath called the Master.”   
  
Jonah and Callie exchanged looks but neither of them seemed really surprised. After this last week, she could’ve probably said he was a vampire and they wouldn’t have been fazed.   
  
“He’s been to Earth a lot of times before now, but the Doctor always stopped him before he ever did something on this scale.”  
  
“We tried to stop him this time, too,” Martha added. “We really did.”  
  
The man snorted. “Good job.”   
  
“Don’t pin this on us. This is your fault, too–you voted for him,” Rose said. “Don’t deny it.”  
  
Jonah looked up sharply. “How was I supposed to know what he was really like? He always seemed so…so…”  
  
“I know, it’s okay.” she sighed. “The Master’s got telepathic abilities and he uses them to sort of…hypnotize people. His range is limited so he created the Archangel Network to extend it across the whole world.”  
  
“But Archangel’s a mobile phone network.”  
  
“On the surface,” Martha agreed. “But underneath that was another signal that he controlled and it broadcasted through the phones, all over the world. That’s how he was able to convince you all he was this great person.”  
  
“And it’s still broadcasting. A psychic field binding the entire human race,” Rose added quietly. “But I don’t know what it’s doing now since everyone sees through him.”  
  
“Can you beat him?” Callie asked.   
  
“No. But the Doctor can.”  
  
“And who’s he?”   
  
For a moment, pain and love warred for the primary expression on her face and finally settled on something like pride. “He’s an alien. Same species as the Master, same home planet, probably around the same age, too. But he’s nothing like the Master. He’s–he’s wonderful. He saves planets and people all across the universe. He’s saved Earth so many times. He makes the impossible choices so no one else has to, and he’s sacrificed so much for the sake of the universe and he never gets anything in return. When I first met him he was so lost and broken but he was still trying to save the word. The hospital that got taken to the moon the other day, he brought it back. The Daleks and Cybermen last year, the Sycorax at Christmas, the aliens that wrecked Big Ben–he stopped all of that. And that’s just in the last few years.”  
  
Jonah and Callie listened raptly, taking bites of their chowder every so often, as Rose told them more about things he’d done on other planets and further back in Earth’s past, and Martha chimed in occasionally when she saw fit. She even told the story about the acid handcuffs and how he’d worked hard to save her. Neither Rose nor Martha mentioned time traveling, and as they didn’t ask how Rose had been there in the incident that saved Queen Victoria in the 1800s.   
  
Rose suspected they thought the two of them were aliens. Or that at least that she was. After all, what human could heal broken bones the way Rose had?  
  
“Do you love him?” Callie asked at one point.  
  
Rose smiled, then, a real, genuine smile. “Very much.”  
  
“So are you an alien, too?”  
  
“No.” She gestured between herself and Martha. “We’re humans.”  
  
“B-but then how did you fix my foot earlier?”  
  
“Ah…that’s a long story.”  
  
“And it’s really not important,” Martha interjected. “What’s important is stopping the Master. The Doctor has a plan and it’s up to all of us–all of planet Earth–to make it work. You’ve gotta tell people about him. Anyone and everyone you meet that can be trusted. Tell them about the Doctor. Tell them the things we told you.”  
  
Jonah sighed loudly. “Seriously? How is that supposed to help?”  
  
Rose smiled wickedly. She spent the next five minutes explaining the Doctor’s plan for using the telepathic power of the entire human race and stressing the need for secrecy. If the Master found out what they were planning, he’d find some way to counteract it. When she was done, they spent the next few minutes in silence as they finished their meal.   
  
“Martha, can I talk with you for a sec?” Jonah asked as he set down his empty bowl. “Callie, wait here with Rose.”  
  
“Kay,” his daughter mumbled around the food in her mouth.   
  
The two of them stood and Jonah led her across to the far side of the barn, just beyond hearing distance of the stall. “Not an idiot, me,” he muttered. “My brother went to get food and medical supplies from Whitchurch a few days ago and he ain’t come back. Don’t reckon he will. I can’t leave Cal on her own to get any more food or supplies. We’re either gonna run out of food or we’re gonna get found. Either way, we’re runnin’ out of time here.”  
  
“You can’t come with us.” Martha interrupted, pulling her TARDIS key from beneath her shirt. “The Doctor made these for us. They provide a perception filter that lets us go unnoticed. It’s how Rose and I have made it this far. But it can’t do the same for you, I’m sorry.”  
  
He shook his head. “Don’t be. You’re gonna be goin’ all over the world. That’s not somethin’ I wanna sign myself up for–never mind Callie. No, I plan on headin’ to Whitchurch as soon as we run out of food, if they haven’t found us first. I just wanted to let you know, that I’ll make sure to tell your story when I get there. I’ll tell them about Martha Jones and Rose Tyler, the two women who’re gonna save the world, and their Doctor.”


	62. Hope

  
  
They spent a full week moving around the boroughs of Liverpool. Most of their time was devoted to scoping out how things were beginning to work. Large percentages of the people had managed to escape the initial roundups and were living rough both inside and beyond the city. The rest, however, had been rounded up into the labor camps, and the escaped survivors were actively being hunted down by the Master’s own private army: the Unified Containment Forces, a bunch of men and women, mostly soldier types that were responsible for disciplining, monitoring, and containing the rest of the human race. The Toclafane were only active in force during Week One. After that, they retreated high into the skies to be called upon when needed.  
  
“Wonder what he’s paying them with?” Martha muttered one afternoon as they were watching a group of CFs force a small family into the back of a truck.  
  
Rose made a quiet noise of disgust.   
  
“No, seriously. It’s not like money’s any good these days. So what’s he giving them?”  
  
Rose didn’t answer for a moment. “Food, clothes, freedom, and guns.” She watched one of the soldiers jab a man in the chest with the muzzle of his gun.   
  
The women found sturdier backpacks, and stocked up on supplies. They found food, two blankets, a spare set of clothes, and binoculars. Each had a knife in their pack. Rose abandoned her blue jacket in favor of a black one that went to her waist, and wasn’t as noticeable. The key could only do so much, after all, and the unfamiliar city was far more dangerous than the small towns and wilds they were used to.  
  
Martha was grateful that Rose was with her for this. Rose’s Torchwood training had given her navigation and survival skills, and Martha was sure growing up on a rough council estate probably helped, too. Plus, being an agent for a top-secret organization had made her an expert on covert operations. Martha knew she probably wouldn’t have made it this far without her.  
  
They also began to tell people to tell about the Doctor. They told groups of people living together in hiding, individuals or pairs living it rough in the war torn city–anyone who would listen. Most of the people they managed to talk to treated them with disbelief and scorn. Their stories were ridiculed as wishful fancies or science fiction, and their plan to save the world was seen as preposterous. Rose tried to display her abilities in attempt to gain their trust, healing minor injuries people had sustained over the last week. But for the most part, that only served to make people wary of her. Freak, they called her. Alien. They were sure one or two of the groups of people they’d met had ratted them out to the CFs.   
  
They’d suspected the Master would want them back on the _Valiant_ one way or another, but upon hearing a group of soldiers talking about the two chicks that the Master is after, they realized exactly what he was willing to do to make sure it happened. Someone had snitched because the soldiers sounded confident that Rose and Martha were somewhere in the city. Rose knew they’d have to be more careful.  
  
They didn’t really make any progress until the sixth evening while in Bootle. They’d found someone who was interested in what they had to say, and agreed to round up as many people as they could to listen to the story. The group met in a nondescript second floor flat in a random block. A crowd of about thirty people had gathered, all survivors living in the building or the surrounding areas. They all had the similar haunted look about them, and most of them looked like they hadn’t had a good bath in days–smelled like it, too. They looked Rose and Martha up and down critically, sizing them up, wondering what they could possibly have to say.   
  
It was the largest group they’d had yet, and they’d been assured that all of them had come of their own free will to hear them out. The first thing Rose and Martha did was to tell them their names. Rose decided to get the ball rolling by telling them about Hshaa, a planet that was entirely flat all the way around except for two mountains at its North and South poles, with winds that never ended and days that lasted weeks. Then, Martha told them about the planet Orobis where the Doctor had been arrested for polygamy simply because he’d held both their hands. Rose told them about the Rinthoran Nebula in a galaxy billions of light years away, which was growing a hundred thousand baby stars in its depths. Martha told them about the Xinnas Manor, made entirely of opal essence, and no matter where you went, every surface was shining.   
  
The people were enraptured. Whether or not they believed them, they were still enjoying the distraction.  
  
Then Rose decided to get to the point. She told them what really happened at Canary Wharf, all the truths the people in power either never knew or kept hidden. She told them her role in it, what she and the Doctor did, and how they saved the world. She told them what she’d given up to stay with him. “’Cos he’s worth it. ‘Cos he’s saved your lives so many times and in the future he’s saved them too. He saved me, when I first met him. Remember the man onboard the _Valiant_ that the Master was talking to? That’s the Doctor.”  
  
“You!” one of the teenagers exclaimed suddenly. “You was there, the both of you!”  
  
“We were,” Martha agreed. “We were trying to stop him. But he’d been planning this for too long and we just didn’t have enough time to stop him. This time, we do. And that’s why we’re here now. We know how to defeat the Master.”  
  
The people listened with new intensity as Rose and Martha explained what had to be done. There were questions, like always, but they were determined to make the people understand. And, finally, it seemed that they had. There was just some doubt that Rose and Martha could pull it off on their own. That was when Rose decided it was time to play their trump card.  
  
One of the men, a tall fellow with light brown hair and a decent build, had his left arm wrapped in gauze. Rose asked him to come forward and asked him his name, which was Lyle. Martha caught on quickly and questioned him about his arm. She told him she was a doctor, and he let her unwrap it as he explained what had happened. It was a burn, and a bad one, too. The flesh was a mix of angry red hues and a few blisters remained swollen under the skin, while others had ruptured. He said they’d run it under cold water and applied burn cream, but it wasn’t healing.   
  
“Yeah, I don’t think it’s gonna,” Martha said. “I’m not a burn specialist but I think this needs a skin graft.”  
  
“Oh, great,” he growled. “Thanks _doc_.”  
  
“Now hang on a tick. Don’t go jumping to conclusions.”  
  
He frowned in disbelief. “You can give me a skin graft?”  
  
“Oh no.” Martha shook her head and looked at Rose. “But it shouldn’t be too hard for you, right?”  
  
“I’ve never dealt with burns before,” Rose hissed nervously. This could end up backfiring horribly.   
  
“It’s just his skin, maybe some nerves–you said those were easy to do.”  
  
Rose licked her lips thoughtfully and decided she had to at least try. Besides, who knew when this would be necessary? So she placed her glowing hand on Lyle’s skin and ignored his yowl of pain at the contact, and let her power flow through the damaged tissue. His cries diminished to whimpers and then quieted all together. Rose drew back, surprised at how little effort it had taken. His arm bore faint traces of the prior damage. The skin was just a bit off-color and waxy, but other than that, he was completely healed.  
  
The onlookers crowded around him in amazement. They touched the repaired skin with nervous fingertips, as if afraid it was nothing more than illusion, and then gasped in shock upon realizing it wasn’t. Some of them came towards her, showing her wounds of their own, cuts and bruises mostly, and she willingly used up miniscule amounts of energy to heal them. The others that hung back out of wariness or doubt gradually came closer to see for themselves.   
  
One older woman with dark, graying hair got really close as Martha was inspecting an ugly cut on the underside a teenaged boy’s arm. “Infected,” Martha declared. “Make sure you get rid of the bacteria under there before you close the wound,” she said to Rose.   
  
The woman’s brown eyes remained riveted on Rose’s shining hand as it covered the wound on his arm while clearing the infection. Then Rose shifted, pressing her pointer and middle fingertips against one end of the cut and dragged them slowly along the length of the incision, closing it as they went. The skin lost its alarming red tint and faded back to normal before their eyes.  
  
The grey-haired woman stared at his arm for a moment longer, and then at Rose with awe. “You work miracles.” She sounded American.  
  
Rose smiled the tiniest bit. “I’ve heard that before.”  
  
The woman reached forward, hesitating a few inches from Rose’s hand, then grasped it firmly in both of hers. She was trembling. “I have always believed in the Lord, ever since I was a little girl. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t. That’s why I became a minister. I’ve had my faith tested but I’ve always persevered I truly believe I have been awarded for it. But–but these last two weeks I–I am ashamed to say, but I had begun to lose faith in Him. How could He let this happen to us?” She shook her head. “I know many Christians in the past have wondered the very same thing in times of tribulation but this is so much more than that. But I’ve doubted. I’ve wondered if maybe He really doesn’t exist…or doesn’t care about us.”  
  
Taking a deep breath, the woman used one of her hands and grabbed Martha’s, drawing her closer as well. “You’re in so much pain, I can see it. You’ve lost those you love, one way or the other, but you have something I haven’t seen in anyone in days. Hope. No, you don’t just have hope–you _are_ hope. Your stories, your knowledge, your power–you two have given me hope for the world. God has given you both the knowledge and strength you will need to save us all. I do not care what your faith is–but you must hold onto it. You must always be as confident as you are today, you must _always_ shine, or people will doubt you. If you want your plan to succeed, then you will have to be the beacon of hope we can all look to. And, Martha, Rose, I believe you can do it.”  
  
Rose stared at her in stunned silence, touched by her words. How could a stranger have such faith in them?   
  
“It’s not us you should remember–it’s the Doctor,” Martha said quietly.   
  
The minister laughed. “The Doctor…he may be the one to defeat the Master in the end, but you two are gonna save the world.” She squeezed both of their hands, smiling, and then released them.   
  
Not long after, most of the crowd began to disperse with promises to spread the stories and the names of Martha Jones and Rose Tyler. They left the flat in groups of two or three. It wasn’t a good idea to have a crowd of people gathered in case a Toclafane came buzzing around. After fifteen minutes, only the two residents of the flat–a man and a woman with curly blonde hair–the minister, and Lyle remained.  
  
“What’s your plan?” Lyle asked them. “You said you’re going around the world. If you came from London, I reckon you don’t plan on going through Europe first. You plannin’ on goin’ towards Scotland or Ireland?”   
  
Rose and Martha glanced at each other. “Scotland,” Martha replied. “We’ve heard talk about survivor camps in Scotland. We want to try to find one outside Glasgow.”  
  
“You’re gonna walk? To Glasgow?”  
  
“Walked from London, didn’t we?” Rose muttered under her breath.  
  
Lyle frowned. “Okay. Walk to Glasgow. And then?”  
  
“We head to the coast and sail to Ireland.”   
  
“And how’s that gonna happen? You plan to steal a boat or something?”  
  
Martha gave a one-shouldered shrug. “If we have to.”   
  
He shook his head. “You two are gonna get yourselves killed if you fly blind. Abe! Abe, mate, bring me that atlas of yours.”  
  
The young bloke with curly blonde hair jumped off the sofa and scurried down the hall towards the bedrooms. The man motioned Rose and Martha into the kitchen and started yanking out drawers and rummaging noisily through the contents.  
  
“Lyle, what the hell you doin’?” The blonde woman demanded.  
  
“Where do you keep your damn markers?”  
  
She sighed. “Third drawer left from the sink.”   
  
He yanked it open, sifting through the contents, and pulled out few thin Expo markers. The blonde man came back with his atlas and was instructed to put it on the table. Lyle exhaled loudly as he sat down at the table and flipped through the pages. Rose and Martha pulled chairs around and sat on opposite sides of him, while the minister and the blonde woman ventured into the kitchen to see what Lyle was up to.  
  
“Alright, take a look.” Lyle smoothed the pages as flat as he could so they could see the world map. “You got a hell lot o’ ground to cover and not a long time to do it in. Way you talk, you gotta get yourselves back to Britain in about fifty weeks. On foot, that ain’t gonna be easy. You’re gonna have to find other ways to travel without getting caught. That’ll be on you. But I can’t in good conscience just let you both run off without some sort of travel plan. I owe you that much.” He held up his arm.  
  
Rose and Martha looked at each other and Rose licked her lips. “Fine. But only you. You three gotta go. It’s not safe if too many people know what we’re planning.”  
  
The two blondes shrugged and headed for the door but the minister stayed where she was. “But I want to help.”  
  
“I know, but it’s for your own good.”  
  
“Hannah, come on,” Abe hissed, beckoning her towards the door.   
  
She scowled, exhaling in a huff. “Fine. We’ll be out here.”  
  
Lyle tapped the map with his finger again as she left the room. “Right, then. Like I said. You got a lot of ground to cover and not a lot of time to do it in. I think you’re wasting time going all the way to Glasgow. We can get word that way ourselves. What you need to focus on is getting out of Britain and fast ‘cos once word starts _really_ getting out about you, then the Master’s gonna come after you.”  
  
“He already is,” Martha said.  
  
“Then you _definitely_ need to scram. Get off this island. But from there is where it gets tricky. See, you’ve got all this _space_ –” he gestured at the land on the map “–but you can’t visit all of it. You’ve only got a few months. You have to get across the oceans and the States and still have time to cross Eurasia. The ocean voyages alone will probably take a few weeks.”   
  
“When should we be on the East coast of Asia?” Rose asked. “Like, what month?”  
  
“Mmm…December. November, if you can manage. Any later and you’re gonna be in trouble. Who knows what it’ll be like over here by then.”  
  
Martha frowned as she studied the page intently. It had been a long time since she’d thought about it, but her planet really was very big. Maybe not compared to some of the planets she’d visited in the last year, but it was still pretty enormous, especially when one only had a year to walk its surface.   
  
Lyle drummed his fingers against the table in a familiar rhythm. _Tap-tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap._ Archangel at work. He didn’t even seem to realize it.   
  
“First things first, we gotta get you to America. I work for–well, I used to work for a shipping company. From what I managed to find out before I got hurt, its boats have been seized and the CFs started usin’ em to transport goods and supplies. And it can transport you two–assumin’ we can get you aboard, that is.”  
  
“Oh, that’ll be easy, don’t worry,” Martha assured him. “We have a way of avoiding detection. We just need to know what boat will take us to Ireland.’  
  
Lyle shook his head. “Forget Ireland. If you start spreading your stories there then the Master will know for a fact what your plan is. You need to vanish into the ether. Get on a boat heading for America. You’ll be at sea for a few days and during that time, we’ll start spreading your message here. They’ll be looking for you here, and by the time word starts circulating about you on the Eastern Seaboard of America, you two could be on your way into the Midwest.”  
  
“Sounds good to me. Rose?”  
  
Rose bit the inside of her lip and looked down at the map again. She tapped the American coast with her pointer finger. “Where would we get off at?”   
  
He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Difficult to say. Probably one of the bigger port cities: New York or Boston. Though, seeing as it’s a transport loop, they’ll probably be making several stops along the coast. I’d get off as soon as you can, if I were you. Once you get there, you need to find yourselves some resistance groups. They know their country; they can get you through it and across the Pacific. Once you get there, make your way across Asia back to Europe.”  
  
“What about Australia, South America, and Africa?” asked Rose.  
  
“South America is way out of the way, same with Australia. The Americans can get word down through Mexico. You could go through Africa but I don’t think it should be a priority. You won’t be able to reach as many people as you will in Europe.”  
  
Martha exhaled through her mouth. “We’re leaving a lot up to chance with this.”  
  
“We’ll just have to trust people to pass the word along. Shouldn’t be too big of a risk,” Rose reasoned. “Like she said, we’re talking about hope and that spreads like wildfire.”  
  
“Fine. North America, Asia, and Europe.”   
  
Lyle nodded, and then started ripping the physical and political maps of North America, Europe, and Asia from the book. Then after a moment’s deliberation, he tore out the one of Britain as well.   
  
A cry of distress came from the other room. “Is he ripping my atlas?!”  
  
“Ignore him,” Lyle muttered. “You need these more than he does.”  
  
Lyle planned to get word to his mates down at the shipyards that night. In the meantime, he suggested Rose and Martha get ready for a long trip, and then meet him back here as soon as possible. They scavenged around to restock their stash of food with what they could find that would survive a week at sea. What wouldn’t, they ate. They went back to the recreation center that they’d discovered still had running water to take showers–and from the looks of things, they weren’t the only ones who knew about this place. They didn’t dawdle.   
  
They returned back to the flat long before dawn, and the blonde woman, whom they learned was named Willow, offered them the bed to sleep on. After being forced to spend the weeks lying mostly on the ground or just pillows, they jumped at the opportunity for a real bed. There was no squabbling about who went where or if they were sleeping at opposite ends of the bed, they both just stripped out of their jackets and shoes and dropped into bed. They were both out within minutes.  
  
Sometime later, Rose was pulled from sleep by an unfamiliar voice in her ear and an insistent shaking. Her body was moving before her mind had even fully transitioned from sleep. She seized the head of the figure above her, and slamming it down onto the edge of the bed. It was a young male from the sound of the resulting yelp. She shoved him, and then launched herself out of the bed, slamming into her attacker’s body, the force of it driving them both towards the wall. She pinned him with her forearm against his throat and a knee between his legs.  
  
“Stop!” he croaked. “It’s me!!”  
  
Rose blinked, recognizing him. “Abe?”  
  
“Rose?” Martha gasped from behind her. “What’s going on?”  
  
“I was just trying to wake you up!” Abe gasped. “God damn, woman, I thought you were gonna kill me.”  
  
“I barely touched you,” she muttered, backing off. He massaged his stomach gingerly and shot her a reproachful look. “What do you want?”  
  
“Lyle’s back. Says he found you a way across but it departs in two hours. There isn’t another one out of there to America for four days, so if you’re gonna go, you gotta go now.”  
  
Rose stared at him for a second, and then she dropped onto the bed and started pulling her shoes on. She heard Martha throw the covers off and grab her jacket. Rose shoved her arms through the sleeves of hers and zipped it up quickly. Pulling her hair out from beneath the collar, she crossed the room to the dresser where she’d noticed some hair ties earlier. She slid three into the pocket of her trousers and gripped one between her teeth as she combed her hair back with her fingers.  
  
“You ready Martha?” she asked through her teeth.  
  
“Just about,” was the reply.   
  
“Can I help with anything?” Abe asked.  
  
“No,” said Martha. “You’ve done enough already. Thanks for the bed.”  
  
“You’re welcome.”  
  
Willow and Lyle were waiting in the entryway. Willow handed Rose and Martha each an apple and a pack of peanut butter crackers to take with them.   
  
“I wouldn’t stay here long, though,” Rose advised the three of them. “Sooner or later they’ll start going door to door for people. You either need to find a resistance group or start moving around. Stay still and you’ll end up slaves.”  
  
“We’ll keep that in mind,” said Willow. “Thank you.”   
  
“And tell the Reverend goodbye for us,” she added.  
  
Willow nodded.  
  
Lyle led the two travelers through the empty streets of Liverpool. The sky was beginning to lighten overhead, and the few birds that remained within the city were starting their morning songs. They kept their ears peeled for the sounds of approaching vehicles since no one that wasn’t a member of the UCF would risk traveling on wheels within the city. More than once, Rose heard the telltale hum of a nearby vehicle and they’d scurry into an alley or nearby building, but only once did something come near them.   
  
They ducked into an alley and quickly found a spot for Lyle to hide. He protested that they were more important than him, but at their insistence, he wedged himself in the space between two dumpsters. They’d only just gotten his feet crammed in as well when a Humvee appeared. Rose and Martha crouched there in the open, watching the black Humvee cruise slowly by, protected by their keys against the searching gazes of the figure in the top. Lyle gasped when the searchlight passed over them.  
  
“Shh,” Rose hissed through unmoving lips.   
  
The Humvee moved on.   
  
They waited until the sound of the engine had faded before grasping Lyle’s hands and hauling him out of the tight space.  
  
“B-but they shined a light on you! The bastards were looking right at you! How the fuck didn’t they see you?”  
  
Martha and Rose glanced at each other then pulled their keys from underneath their jackets. “Perception filters,” said Martha.   
  
“And that’s…?”  
  
“It’s so people won’t notice us,” Rose explained. “We’re not invisible–we can still be _seen_ –but it’s difficult unless we draw attention to ourselves.”  
  
Lyle blinked several times. “But I can see you.”  
  
“When you walked into the flat last night, did you notice us at first?”  
  
He cocked his head to the side. “Now that you mention it, I really didn’t. I was…aware you were there, I guess, but I didn’t really _know_ until you started talkin’.”  
  
“That’s the perception filter.”  
  
“But, wait, that means they still saw you. They might come back if they realize it,” he pointed out.  
  
“Uh, right. Let’s keep moving,” Rose said, tucking her key back in.   
  
They cut through a small park with a rugby pitch. Rose thought she might’ve glimpsed someone sitting in the shadow of the fence that surrounded the field but she wasn’t sure. After the park they wound through another residential area. The houses gave way to industrial buildings and warehouses, and they began to hear the bustle of the shipyard.   
  
Lyle ducked behind an abandoned car in the parking lot of a nondescript building. “Alright, it’s just around the corner. There’s another shift of workers being brought in by convoy any minute. I’ll get on board one of the trucks. You two, though, since you got them keys, you can just walk through the gate, right? I’ll meet you inside.”  
  
Rose was a little worried that they’d be spotted as they strode towards guard shack between the entrance and exit lanes. But the man inside didn’t so much as glance in their direction the entire time, not even when their shoes scuffled against the ground as they ducked under the rail. They made their way towards the pier where the boats were being loaded.   
  
The convoy arrived a few minutes later, and they followed the trucks to the unloading spot. Carefully, they weaved through the exhausted workers and their fresh replacements until they found Lyle at the end of the line. His eyes were darting around, seeking them, but he didn’t seem to notice them walking alongside until Martha tapped his arm. He glanced down, blinked, and then looked away.   
  
When no one was paying attention, he split away from the group and headed down the pier towards a boat that was nearing the end of the loading process.   
  
“The _Trucail_ ,” he muttered. “Captain’s a fellow called Patrick. He should be waiting out here somewhere. I’ll point him out to you then I gotta get the hell out of here.”  
  
“Thank you for this,” Rose said.   
  
“Thanks for my arm. Good luck.”  
  
“You too.”  
  
Lyle didn’t say another word as they neared the _Trucail_. He approached a stout man with a pale beard standing rigidly next to a gangplank, observing the scene.  
  
“Sir,” Lyle greeted. “Got that last bit of cargo.”  
  
Patrick’s eyes flicked around but he didn’t notice them. “Do ya?” the Irishman asked.  
  
“Yes sir.” He lowered his voice. “It’s right behind me.”   
  
Patrick glanced behind him unsurely and frowned. “Is it?”   
  
Rose took a deep breath, closed her eyes, exhaled, and when they opened they were shingling gold. His gaze finally rested on her, drawn in by the odd coloring, and then he noticed Martha.   
  
“Ah, right then. We’ll get that sorted. See you later.”  
  
Lyle gave him a two-fingered salute and turned around. His lips twitched into a smile for half a second at the two women then he strode off without looking back.  
  
Patrick cleared his throat meaningfully then started up the gangplank. Rose and Martha followed him silently onboard the _Trucail_. As Rose’s feet touched the rickety wood, she had the horrible feeling that it was gonna be a long week. 


	63. The Farce

  
  
When the _Trucail_ docked in Boston, Rose and Martha learned that the rebellion there had been defeated early on and was ruled by the UCFs. Patrick told them to go to New York City. Their shipment to the city had been withheld at the last minute, and orders had been given to avoid the city. This meant something big was going down, and whoever was in charge didn’t want the supplies on the ship getting stolen.  
  
The pair found Boston’s remaining resistance groups easily enough, and were given a wealth of information about how the first few weeks had been for America. Philadelphia, Baltimore, and most of the major cities had all met similar fates as Boston. Word had come from survivors in Baltimore that most of Washington DC’s infrastructure had been spared, but very few people made it out. The UNIT branch had been decimated.  
  
But New York City remained, the one city that refused to fall. According to the reports and rumors, it was an all-out warzone. Citizens and military fought side by side versus the Master’s troops–but not the Toclafane…not yet.  
  
After spending three weeks moving around the lower New England area, they caught a ride on a supply convoy heading to the aid of the NYC. They figured they had to at least see what was going on for themselves before running the other way. And, from the way it sounded, UNIT was still alive and kicking there. It could be extremely beneficial if UNIT was on their side. But they agreed that lingering in the city wouldn’t be safe. Really, it was a miracle the Toclafane hadn’t descended yet.   
  
Arriving in the outer boroughs of New York, they were warned it could take a day or more for transport into Manhattan to be arranged. They decided to spend that time talking to the non-combatant civilians. They managed to meet with a few small groups of people before a man in a uniform overheard Martha mention her medical skills, and then he was all but dragging her towards the medical outpost, demanding to know why she hadn’t stepped forward sooner. They needed all the help they could get in there. Not wanting to get separated, Rose had no choice but to follow.   
  
The rebels chose a Wal-Mart not too far from one of the hospitals to serve as the medical outpost since an actual hospital would be far too big a target. Upon entering, the smell of blood and disease made Rose gag, and even Martha’s face screwed up. Most of the store had been picked clean of everything useful some time ago, and most of the shelves had been carried away. Though a portion of the market section still had food on its shelves and armed guards to make sure it stayed there. About two hundred people were lying on the counters, checkout stations, and tables made of merchandise and the store’s shelves.   
  
A female doctor wearing a tattered, yet still miraculously intact, hijab introduced them to Armand, a doctor with black hair and dark circles under his eyes like he hadn’t slept in days. Armand was one of the doctors who’d set this place up. He said there were about fifteen nurses and seven doctors, including him and Razia, the woman who’d escorted them. They welcomed another pair of trained hands.  
  
Rose hesitantly told them about the ability she had and was met with skepticism as she’d expected. So to convince them without wasting her precious supply of energy, she demonstrated on a boy who’d broken his leg.   
  
“But that’s impossible,” Armand said. “That is scientifically impossible.”  
  
Rose ignored him. “Try putting a bit of weight on it,” she told the boy. “You might be weak for a little bit but there shouldn’t be any more pain.”  
  
The boy tilted his leg from side to side, and then gingerly drew his knee up to his chest. From the look of utter shock on his face, Rose knew she’d succeeded. Armand carefully removed the splint from the boy’s leg and inspected the skin, pressing against the bone in his leg intermittently.  
  
He shook his head. “It doesn’t hurt.”  
  
“Doesn’t feel broken, either,” Armand murmured. He looked at Rose. “How…?”  
  
“It’s…not something I can just explain.”  
  
He straightened, eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Try.”  
  
“You wouldn’t understand.”  
  
“Try me. Because right now, I’m considering throwing you out, because what you just did wasn’t human. Your eyes _weren’t human_. And recently, everything not human hasn’t exactly been friendly.”  
  
“That you know of,” she shot back. “There’ve been aliens on Earth for years. Plenty of good aliens who don’t mean the human race any harm. For God’s sake, Earth’s biggest and oldest defender isn’t even human. Plus, I dunno if you noticed mate, but you’re not exactly battlin’ it out with aliens right now. All those UCFs are human.”  
  
“Rose, he’s just concerned for his patients,” Martha placated.   
  
“I know he is. But maybe he could lose the ‘burn the witch’ vibe he’s giving off. …I’m human and I’m a time traveler. I did something incredibly stupid once that ended up saving the universe but it changed me. I’m able to use the supply of energy within myself to heal at a rapid rate and I can heal others, too. Alright?”  
  
Armand stared at her, expression unreadable.   
  
“It’s true,” Martha said. “What she’s saying. I know it’s a bit frightening. Scared the pants of us when she first did it and it…still scares me a little. But she is the most caring, selfless person I know and she would never hurt anyone unless it was to save someone else. Now, Dr. Armand, you’ve got someone with the power completely unique in the world standing right in front of you, offering her help–and at personal cost, might I add. So are you gonna throw this gift away or are you gonna let us help you?”  
  
He stared at her silently for just long enough that Rose was beginning to worry they might actually have to run for it and then he finally nodded his head. “There’s a man here who had his leg torn off.”  
  
Rose resisted the urge to exhale in relief. “I can’t regrow limbs but I can close the wound and remove the infection.  
  
Armand nodded again. “This way.”   
  
Rose started to follow him, but Martha tapped her on her arm. She turned. “Will you be alright without me?” Martha asked. “I want to go find a way to make myself useful.”  
  
“Yeah, sure.”  
  
Martha nodded and turned to go, but then something occurred to her, and she turned back. “Remember, if you feel yourself about to pass out, try to at least fall away from sharp objects.”  
  
Rose’s lips curled upward in amusement. “Yes, Mum.”  
  
Martha smiled before heading off on her own and Rose went to catch up with Armand. He led her to the back of the Wal-Mart where there were proper beds made out of couches and loveseats. These were the patients in serious condition, the ones that may never leave the building of their own power again, the ones waiting to die. The ones, Rose knew, who would be killed without question if this building were to be raided. But she didn’t tell him that. She probably didn’t need to.   
  
Next to a handful of the beds, there were people sitting. The people watched Rose and Armand pass despondently. She was led to a couch where a lone Hispanic man lay, wrapped in a blanket, and barely lucid. He had an IV in his arm attached by a thin tube to a bag of clear liquid. Pain meds, probably. And Lord, did he need them.   
  
“What’s his name?” Rose asked.  
  
“We don’t know. He was found yesterday not too far from here, half-buried under a collapsed building. He was lucky to even survive the journey here.”  
  
“And his leg?”  
  
“It didn’t come out of the rubble with him.” Armand lifted the blanket away from the man’s lower half, revealing his right leg and the stump, heavily bandaged about halfway down the other thigh. “Do your thing.”  
  
“I can’t. I need to be touching the actual area for it to work best. You’re gonna have to unwrap it.”  
  
Armand swore under his breath. “Okay. Give me a minute.”  
  
Rose nodded and kneeled down beside the couch. She touched his cheek but he didn’t even so much as twitch. Actually, he didn’t even seem to be aware they were there. Though that was probably for the best considering she was going to have to mess with his leg in a moment. But she still wanted him to know what she was going to do and get consent before she expended the energy on someone who may just want to die and get it over with.  
  
So, ignoring the little twinge of guilt in her stomach, she stretched her mind out, seeking. As she rose onto her knees and moved her face into his line of sight, she slipped into his mind. She kept to the outer area, away from the thick haze of his inner mind that was being dulled by the pain medication. But if she couldn’t get a response out here that’s where she’d have to go.   
  
_Can you hear me?_  
  
At first there was nothing but as she repeated her message a second and then finally a third time, she finally felt a flicker of curiosity. With a sigh, she pushed just a little further towards the haze and she began to pick up on more of his emotions, and finally, the weak traces of thought.  
  
 _My name’s Rose Tyler. What’s yours?  
  
Roberto Acosta… _  
  
“His name is Roberto,” Rose said aloud.   
  
“How the…?” Armand started to ask and then he seemed to decide against it.   
  
_Where am I?  
  
You’re in hospital.  
  
What happened to me…I remember…_ Rose caught flashes of memory. The pure terror as he realized the building was coming down, frantically trying to escape, getting knocked down, agony in his leg– _My leg…my leg…_  
  
Rose brushed her fingers across his cheek in sympathy. _I’m sorry. I can’t bring your leg back but I can heal what remains.  
  
Please. _  
  
She withdrew from his mind as quickly as she dared and scooted down to his legs. What remained of his left was a frightening shade of red and held together by thick black stitches. Blood, plasma, and a bit of pus were dried around the edges and one area seemed to still be oozing a bit. Rose took a deep breath and urged the power down her hands. The process was becoming quite familiar and, unless she was mistaken, easier. It only took a second after she willed it for her palms to shine with the telltale light and she pressed them to his leg.  
  
As she inspected the area of the injury, she became aware of an immediate problem. The stitches were the only thing holding the skin together and any attempt to remove them before she started to work would only make things worse. But in order to remove them herself, she would have to heal the skin around the stitches, dissolve them without harming the skin, and _then_ heal the many holes they left behind. It wasn’t going to be easy and she didn’t know what would happen after.  
  
“Armand,” she said. “There is a very good chance I’m gonna pass out when I finish this. I’m gonna need food to get myself going again. Things rich with protein and vitamins work best. Can you get me some?”  
  
“We’re in a Wal-Mart. I’m sure I could find you something.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
As it happened, Rose didn’t lose consciousness, not entirely. She couldn’t sit up for about ten minutes without getting so dizzy that she had to lay back down. During that time, one of the nurses brought Rose some food and Armand got Roberto Acosta unhooked from the pain medication he would no longer need. It took another fifteen minutes after that before she got up and moving. She moved from bed to bed and Armand followed, answering her questions about each patient.   
  
The two cancer patients were beyond her help, as was the man who’d had a stroke, and the blind man who’d been deafened. The woman with blood poisoning she could possibly help but she didn’t know how to even start or if she even had the strength for something like that. There were four who’d been shot that were only barely stable and two burn victims–those groups she could help. Over the next four hours, she made her way through the rows of beds, alternating between resting and working.   
  
During one of her rest periods, she realized there might be something she could do for the blind man who’d lost his hearing. She spoke to him telepathically. He could still speak on his own and the first thing he asked was why he could only hear her voice. The idea of telepathy didn’t bother him too much since he was used to hearing voices without seeing the source. She asked him what had led to his sudden deafness, and he said the last thing he remembered hearing was an explosion.   
  
She relayed this to Armand. “That explains things,” he said. “He has ruptured eardrums. Nothing to be done for that.” Rose raised one eyebrow and Armand sighed, rolling his eyes. “Right.”  
  


~*~

  
  
UNIT had taken heavy hits since the first day, yet they retained their grit. They’d taken over most of the remaining military, coordinating both sets of troops, rationing and distributing supplies, handling civilian recruits, and keeping tabs on the hideouts of the known survivor groups. It was quite impressive, Martha decided, as two armed soldiers escorted her and Rose through their base (in a former department store not far from Times Square) to meet the Brigadier General. Some people watched them as they passed, and Martha could feel the judgment in their stares.   
  
She wondered how they must look to the UNIT soldiers. They’d been on the move for over a month now, they hadn’t showered in a few days, and their clothes were a bit worse for the wear. Rose was paler than usual but that was the only sign that she’d used her powers more today than she ever had. As they walked through UNIT, she kept her head up, her shoulders squared, and her stride was steady and meaningful. She was intimidating, formidable, and Martha did her best to mimic her.   
  
They were led to a storage cupboard-turned-office and presented before a black man with deep wrinkles and an even deeper frown. He wore the typical UNIT officer uniform sans the many medals and decoration usually seen on ranking officials as well as his hat. He wore a gun on each hip. His dark eyes looked them up and down critically, missing nothing and judging everything.  
  
Rose and Martha met his gaze evenly.  
  
“So,” he finally said. “You’re the two women who think they can save the world.”  
  
Rose lifted her chin at the derision in his voice. “Great, you know who we are? Now who the hell are you? We asked to speak with the brigadier.”  
  
“And what makes you think you’re not speaking with him?” the man countered.  
  
“Because the brigadier general of the American UNIT forces is a woman named Adrienne Kramer. We’ve met.”  
  
Surprise flickered across his face. “And what’s your name?”  
  
“Rose Tyler. I work for Torchwood.”   
  
The man’s expression darkened at the mention of the Institute. “Ah. And where is Torchwood now?”  
  
“Most of our team was on a mission before this started and I don’t know if they’re still alive. Jack Harkness is currently held prisoner onboard the _Valiant_. I’m all that’s left.”  
  
“And you?” he asked Martha.  
  
“This is Martha Jones. Now that we’ve introduced ourselves, I think it’s your turn. Let’s start with who you are and where the hell is Kramer?”  
  
The man stared at her for a moment longer and then exhaled sharply through his nose. “Well. I don’t see the point wasting valuable time so I’ll be forward with you. General Kramer is extremely busy and does not have the time or patience to be disturbed for anything other than official business. And, frankly two foreigners who claim they can kill that psychopath aren’t anywhere a top priority.”  
  
“Yeah, right, okay. I understand.” Rose nodded. “So if time’s such an important thing to you lot then why don’t you stop wasting ours, alright? I want you to go to General Kramer and tell her the Doctor’s wife would like to speak to her. Tell her exactly that. ‘The Doctor’s wife.’”   
  
The man seemed taken aback.   
  
“You’re the one who said we can’t afford to be wasting time,” Martha added, folding her arms. “G’on. Shift!”  
  
Barely three minutes passed between the time he left and the time General Adrienne Kramer arrived. She was still as imposing she was the last time Martha had lain eyes on her–Kentucky, 2003. But there was weariness about her that hadn’t been there before, the same one Martha had seen on countless faces since their journey began. It spoke of struggle, grief, exhaustion, and despair. Yet there was also a hard determination about her, and a look of hope in her eyes as they found Rose and Martha and recognized from years before.  
  
“His wife?” was the first thing she asked.  
  
Rose offered her a one-shouldered shrug. “I figured it’d get you here quicker than sort-of girlfriend or lover.”  
  
Kramer cocked her head to the side briefly, seeing the point. She walked around them and perched on the edge of the desk. Looking them both up and down, she licked her lips. “You look like hell.”  
  
“Been in front of a mirror lately?” Martha responded.   
  
She barked a laugh. “No. Haven’t had the time. So, where is he?”  
  
Neither woman needed to ask whom she meant. Rose ducked her head so Martha decided to take point. “He’s with the Master.”  
  
“So he _is_ a prisoner.”  
  
“Yes. But he’s got a plan. It’s not much, but with the Doctor…”  
  
“He can work miracles with next to nothing.” Kramer nodded. “And that’s why you’re here?”  
  
There was no need for stories with Kramer. Rose and Martha took turns explaining the details of the plan, what needed to be done, and by when. The General listened silently, nodding appropriately here and there, but otherwise did not respond until after they were finished. She inhaled slowly and rubbed her mouth with her hand.  
  
“Prayers and hope,” she rumbled.   
  
“Not what you were expecting.” Rose stated.  
  
“Not in the least. When I heard that two people were preaching a way to kill the Master, I thought that’s what you meant.”  
  
“We never once said we planned to kill him,” Martha pointed out. “People just assumed.”  
  
Kramer rubbed her mouth again. “And maybe that’s a good thing.”  
  
Martha folded her arms. “How do you mean?”  
  
“We think you want to kill him. He probably does, too. The Doctor is known for his dislike of death…but you two? You’re wild cards. Especially you, Torchwood.”   
  
Rose smiled just a bit.  
  
“You want him dead.” It wasn’t a question.  
  
“Yes,” Martha said immediately but Rose hesitated.   
  
“Rose?”  
  
“I _do_ , but…the Doctor…” She seemed to struggle with something for few seconds. “He’s been on his own for so long now. He’s the last Time Lord, did you know that, General? The rest of them are dead and gone and he can feel it every second of the day. In here.” She tapped her head. “So I offered…I asked if I could learn to use my telepathy and be in his mind like his people used to be. The look on his face…” Her face softened at the memory before she cleared her throat and gave her head a little shake. “Then we found the Master. He’s a Time Lord.”  
  
“Oh, well that’s just fucking fantastic.” Kramer slammed her palms angrily against the table.  
  
“But don’t you see? He’s not alone anymore. The Doctor…doesn’t _want_ to kill him. He’s furious with him and I’d be surprised if he didn’t hate him, but he doesn’t want to kill him.”  
  
Kramer glared at her. “Yes, well, excuse me if I don’t exactly _care_ what the Doctor wants. He had a chance to save the world, he blew it, and got himself taken prisoner. And now the world’s gone to hell and people are dying. We estimate millions were killed that first day alone.”  
  
“Six hundred million, actually,” Martha said quietly. Kramer’s intense eyes bore into hers. “The Master said to kill off one-tenth of the population. I–I did the math.”  
  
“Six hundred million, day one, Agent Tyler,” Kramer deadpanned. “So I hope you understand why I don’t give a rat’s ass about what the Doctor wants at this point.”  
  
“But the plan–”  
  
“Is a long shot that depends solely on you two making it around the world in a year. Awful lot of opportunities for failure. More than I’m comfortable with.”  
  
“So you won’t help us, then.” Rose said flatly.   
  
“I didn’t say that.” Kramer stood up. “I said I don’t plan on relying solely on you two. But I’ll help you.”  
  
Rose and Martha exchanged relieved sighs and smiles.   
  
“Now, people think you’re planning on killing the Master. He probably expects that, too. So why not let him go on believing it? If he finds out the truth, he’ll find a way to counter it. You need a lie people can spread along with the truth.” Kramer took a few steps towards them, a devious smirk tugging at her lips. “You need a reason why you’re travelling the world. And I think UNIT can help.”  
  
  


~*~

  
  
Four days after leaving New York City, when they were well into the Appalachian Mountains, they felt the ground shake and heard the distant reverberations of numerous explosions. They came from the north. Within the hour, they could see the smoke. They knew, of course, what it was. The only thing it could be. And three days later while in a survivor camp deep within the mountains, their suspicious were proven true.  
  
New York City had been bombed. The only survivors had been on the far outskirts. Manhattan and everything in the surrounding five miles had been decimated. No one knew if there’d been any warning, but even if there had been, there probably wouldn’t have been enough time to do anything about it. Armand’s hospital: gone. Adrienne Kramer and everyone in that base: gone.   
  
But Kramer’s plan for them was solid and they would hold onto it.   
  
They moved south, keeping to the Appalachians until they ran out. The mountains were full of survivors, large and small groups alike, most of which were cynical but once they were won over, became fierce allies. They agreed to get word as far west as Ohio and to the eastern coastline. One of the groups somewhere in Virginia let the two of them stay for a week and a half and during that time, the members taught Rose and Martha how to survive in the wilderness. So far they’d been lucky enough to always have food with them and be restocked by survivor groups, but that wouldn’t always be the case. They showed the women what berries and plants could be eaten if necessary, how to clean and gut an animal and cook them on a campfire, how to purify creek or lake water, how to work a well, and how to hide their tracks and scent just in case they were followed. They also got crash courses in hunting, tracking, and crossbows.   
  
After leaving the Appalachians, they cut through the Carolinas before looping around southern Georgia, up through a few camps around Atlanta, and into northern Alabama.  
  
They spent July 4th, American Independence Day, with a group of survivors in a campground near Athens, Alabama. The survivors had heard a rumor about the two of them, and welcomed them in, curious to hear the truth for themselves. They were holding their own little cookout as a morale booster and something to keep the kids happy. Jacob, the man in charge, invited Rose and Martha to join in, although the irony of the situation escaped no one.   
  
The campground had five cabins and a mess hall. There were twenty adults and five children in total. They’d had four more adults at the beginning, but they’d gone on a supply run to Athens once and never came back.   
  
While Martha offered to look at the two people they had that were sick, Rose attempted to approach the five children playing tag on the other side of the camp. The youngest were always the first and easiest to be swayed. But the moment they saw her coming, one of them shrieked, “THE BRITISH ARE COMING! THE BRITISH ARE COMING!” And they all ran away from her, laughing and squealing, glancing over their shoulders at her almost…expectantly. With a roll of her eyes, she realized that was her invitation to join the game as the person who was ‘it’.   
  
It had been a stressful few months and she discovered after about thirty seconds that a game of tag with the kids was actually a good form of stress relief. They didn’t expect anything of her. They didn’t know she had freaky powers or the weight of the world on her shoulders. She was just another player in a game where the stakes about as high as a little league football match.   
  
When they sat down to dinner, there was a lull in the larger conversation as they started eating. The only sounds were the clanking of silverware, chewing, and a few conversations meant simply to pass the time. But Rose didn’t miss the air of anticipation among the Americans. About five minutes after the meal started, Jacob cleared his throat loudly and asked what everyone was thinking. So Rose and Martha began telling their stories of the Doctor.   
  
The people listened as they normally did, a few asking questions here and there. It was going fine and, if nothing else, they had people enraptured. They were surprised, however, when a girl of about nineteen raised her hand and asked if she could tell them a story of her own.   
  
“When I was little, we’d hit a rough patch at home and I overheard my parents arguing one night over money and the soccer program I wanted to join, and college, and just basically how my brother and me were so expensive. So I decided I didn’t want to be a burden anymore and I was running away to my aunt’s. I was waiting at the bus station by myself and this man asked if he could sit on the bench with me. He had long curly brown hair and he was dressed like someone out of a Jane Austin book–very handsome. He said his name was the Doctor. He sounded British but he told me he came from a place farther away than I could imagine. I asked where he was going. ‘Anywhere I wish,’ he said. ‘And you?’ I told him I was going to New York City.  
  
“Then he asked me if what I was running from was worth that and so I told him about what was going on at home. He never patronized me, never told me I was overreacting, being dramatic, or anything. He just…listened. When I was done, he was quiet for a few seconds and then he said to me–and I swear I’ll never forget anything from that whole conversation–he said, ‘I understand. I ran away from my home too, you know, a long time ago. It was never a good place for me. And I’ve been better for it. I’ve met so many wonderful people and seen so many amazing things. You could too, one day, but not now, Anna. But! …If you get on that bus, you won’t get the chance to.’  
  
“He offered to walk me home and I let him. We did make a stop at this…blue box, I think it was–it’s weird ‘cos that’s the only thing I can’t really remember. He gave me a cedar box and told me to hide it in my backpack and not take it out until after he was gone. When we got there, my momma was frantic and my dad was getting ready to go out looking for me. The Doctor helped me explain why I’d run away and stayed to make sure I wasn’t in trouble. Then he was gone.”   
  
Anna paused, looking around at all the faces. “The next day was 9/11.”  
  
A low murmur swept through the crowd. Martha’s eyes widened and Rose inhaled sharply through her nose.  
  
“What was in the box?” asked one of the children.  
  
“It was this beautiful diamond necklace–from the Victorian era–and the largest one was the size of my thumbnail. And there was a little piece of paper stuck in the side that said: _be sure to score a goal in your first game for me_.” She smiled, ducking her head. “There weren’t any alien planets or monsters. I never knew he was anything but human until today. He was just a man who saw a lonely, scared little girl and helped her.”   
  
Rose finally managed to speak, “Sounds just like him.”  
  
“So…who is this Doctor?” one of the women asked.  
  
“Why’s he important?” a man asked.   
  
“Because…” Rose paused for effect. “He’s the man who can defeat the Master. It’s gonna be a while before he’s ready–and, hell, we need all the time we can get–but he can stop him. He’s done it before and he’ll do it again.”   
  
“But he needs your help.” Martha added. “That’s why we’re travelling around the world.”  
  
For a few moments, everyone was quiet. The adults exchanged looks and some of them shifted around in their seats.  
  
Jacob cleared his throat again. “Right, then. What do we need to do?”


	64. Innocence of Youth

  
By the end of the second week of July, Rose and Martha were nearly to the tip of Indiana, en route for Chicago. They’d spent too long in the Appalachians, and they didn’t have time for many stops in Tennessee or Kentucky. They were lucky enough to encounter a group in Tennessee that was a part of a larger network in the Midwest, and they arranged for travel between their groups during the night. They’d met with a total of five survivor groups and only stayed until the dead of night when it was safe to move again.   
  
Their next stop was a group somewhere in the vicinity of Evansville, Indiana. They were in the back of a black pickup with no hood. The ride was bumpy and uncomfortable, and Rose and Martha had to keep themselves from flying out. Rose wondered if her bum would ever recover.  
  
The closer they got to the city, the more Rose became aware of a strange sensation in her head. A sort of tapping. If she knew better, she’d call it probing. But it was far too light and broad to be a direct assault, more like a search. She briefly entertained the idea of responding before dismissing it. It wasn’t the Doctor, it couldn’t be. She’d know his mental touch anywhere. It felt benign but she couldn’t take the risk. For all she knew, the Master might’ve found a way to use the Archangel Network against her, _if_ he even knew about her telepathy.   
  
They’d crossed the Ohio River about half an hour before, and they were circling back towards the city. Their driver knocked on the back window to warn them that they were five miles from the drop spot. She couldn’t take them directly to the camp in case she was being followed. She had warned them that she could only slow down for a few seconds, so they would be able to jump out of the bed of the truck, and then she would have to speed back up to avoid suspicion. An escort would be there to meet them. Hopefully.   
  
Another knock. One-mile mark.   
  
Rose rolled to her knees and slid her pack onto her back. She gripped the edge of the truck bed. Beside her, Martha was struggling to get her pack on, and Rose risked letting go with one hand to help her. She felt the truck begin to slow and returned her hand to the cool metal. Any second now…  
  
The driver rapped sharply on the window. Rose vaulted up and over the side of the truck, hitting the ground without an ounce of grace. She heard Martha land a half a second later. Pain raced up her arms and legs and her palms sparked with sharp pain. With a gasp, she yanked her hands away from the ground and brushed them together, removing the rocks. The truck accelerated, and within a minute it had disappeared, the sound of its engine slowly fading away.  
  
Rose felt the familiar tingle in her hands as her body repaired itself and, aware of Martha’s quiet grunts beside her, sent a thought in her direction.  
  
 _You okay?_  
  
“Cut my palms,” she muttered in reply. “There’s some rocks here.”   
  
_Me too. Give ‘em here._  
  
Martha held out her hands and Rose closed hers over them. They shined with golden light, and Martha sighed in relief.  
  
Rose suddenly became aware that the rumble of the truck’s engine wasn’t getting quieter anymore. With a start, she realized what she was hearing the sound of a different engine getting closer. She jerked back stuffing her palms under her sleeves until they stopped glowing. In the distance, they saw a pair of headlights on the road, travelling at high speed.   
  
Martha leapt to her feet, grabbed Rose by the arm, and they hauled ass away from the road. When the vehicle had nearly reached them, they dropped to the ground again and waited. They saw what looked like a black Humvee racing down the road. It didn’t stop, but continued on in the direction their truck had gone.  
  
Rose felt sick. No one but Unified Containment Force members drove with headlights on these days.   
  
“Oh God,” Martha whispered. “Someone _was_ following us. …Oh, God, what about the camp? Beth, Karrie, Micah, Eduardo–”  
  
“We just gotta hope they’re okay,” Rose replied quietly. “Come on. We don’t want to keep them waiting.”  
  
Their rendezvous point was a copse of trees half a mile from the road. Each group had a code word they’d have to exchange to confirm identities, and Rose would brush through minds to search for any hostility or malicious intent.   
  
There it was, that _probing_ again. It was even stronger now, more direct.   
  
When they neared the copse, Rose left her jacket partially unzipped so that she could get to her gun. She thought she might’ve heard a voice up ahead but she wasn’t quite sure.  
  
“Did you hear that?” Martha muttered.  
  
“Yeah. I think they’re here.”  
  
The copse itself was only about a hundred meters in diameter. Even still, they wouldn’t have known where their escorts were if one of them hadn’t laughed quietly.  
  
Rose swiveled around and spotted two figures standing just out of the moonlight near a tree.   
  
“I see you,” said a childish voice from within the darkness.  
  
“God dammit, kid!” the taller figure, a man from the sound of him, smacked the smaller one across the head. “The one time I want you quiet is when you decide to start opening your trap.”  
  
“Because it’s them!” the smaller figure, a boy, retorted.  
  
“We’ll see about that.” Rose heard him mutter as he stalked towards them. “Where you passin’ through?”  
  
“The Crossroads,” Martha answered.   
  
The man stopped about three feet away from them and held something up. There was a quiet click and suddenly a propane lantern was illuminating a smiling, heavily lined face. He nodded his head at them. “Hey there. You must be Rose and Martha.”  
  
“Told you,” the younger boy said merrily as he approached. The closer he got to the light, the more Rose could make out. He was small, barely into puberty from the sound of him, and had floppy blonde hair that really needed to be cut. And she knew without a doubt that they’d met before.  
  
Rose narrowed her eyes at him and he smiled back pleasantly. “I know you,” she said.   
  
“I do, too,” Martha realized.   
  
He nodded and cocked his head to one side. “It’ll come to you, Miss James.”   
  
A beat.   
  
Martha’s hand flew to her mouth to muffle a gasp. It took Rose a few seconds longer. It had been years after all. But the face, the scrawny frame, the big blue eyes, and the way he was grinning up at her–she remembered everything about that night, including him.   
  
“Elliot?” she exclaimed.   
  
Elliot Hunter beamed cheerfully. “Hi again.”   
  
They’d met Elliot during their forced sabbatical on Earth while hiding from the Family of Blood. The Doctor, as John Smith, had been a pediatrician working in the hospital where Elliot was being treated for cancer. He’d never, in all the time they’d known him, uttered a single word other than a scream of pain. But he was quite the artist, and psychic to boot. He’d used his abilities to lead Rose to John that night and he’d been able to utilize the psychic paper to communicate with her.  
  
The man stared down at him, dumbfounded. “You know ‘em?”  
  
“Yep. We saved the world together. Didn’t we?” he glanced at Rose slyly.  
  
“You’re talking,” Martha blurted out.   
  
“Hasn’t shut up in the last two hours,” the man groused. “Any other day it’s a miracle to get a full sentence out of them.”  
  
“You knew we were coming,” Rose guessed.   
  
Elliot nodded. “When the messenger told us about you, I saw your faces.”  
  
“You haven’t been tapping at my mind by any chance, have you?” Rose asked.  
  
He grinned sheepishly. “Sorry. I didn’t know it was you until just a bit ago. I wasn’t sure _what_ I was feeling.”  
  
“Me neither. I thought it might’ve been the Master or Archangel.”  
  
“Archangel?” the man interrupted. “Ain’t that the old cell phone network?”  
  
“It’s also a psychic network that’s been manipulating the entire human race.”  
  
Elliot’s nose wrinkled in disgust. He was the one of the only physic humans she’d ever met, and the only one that was naturally telepathic. He must’ve been aware of something off very early into the game. She wondered what it felt like to him, having the entire human race linked on a psychic level. Her telepathic abilities had come around long after Archangel had begun broadcasting so she didn’t know any different.  
  
“So how old are you now?” Rose asked him as they walked.   
  
“Nearly fifteen. You?”  
  
“Not entirely sure. But it’s been a bit longer for me than it has for Martha.”  
  
“You got separated,” he said. “You were with Torchwood.”  
  
She glanced down at him. “You reading my mind?”  
  
“No. Not yours.”  
  
“Oi!” Martha exclaimed a second later. “Don’t do that!”  
  
Elliot smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. I can’t help what I pick up on.”  
  
The man shook his head and let out an annoyed scoff. Rose frowned at his back. “Problem?”  
  
“He’s always saying that. ‘I can’t help it,’” he mocked. “I say he’s just a nosy eavesdropper.”   
  
Elliot nudged Rose’s arm. “Don’t mind Ty. He just doesn’t like it that I know he smuggles alcohol in. And that he totally has the hots for Marley,” he added with a sly look in Ty’s direction.   
  
Rose pressed her lips together to stifle a snicker. “So you pick up on a lot, then?”  
  
“Mmhmm. For a while now. It’s like those walls the Doctor helped me make hardly work. I wanna keep ‘em all the way up but then I feel blind. So I just deal. What about you?”  
  
“What about me?” Rose asked.   
  
“Your mind’s different. I can’t get a thing from you. Are you all closed up?”  
  
So, he couldn’t get a read on her. That was surprising. She had been an open book to him the last time they’d met. “I have to be,” she told him stiffly.  
  
“But you’re not like me,” said Elliot. He glanced up at her unsurely.   
  
“We’re more alike than you think, actually.” She murmured after a moment.  
  
Elliot cocked his head to one side and she saw him staring at her out of the corner of his eye. The rest of their two-mile trek was completed in silence though she noticed he kept looking up at her every so often.   
  
Their group was living on an abandoned horse farm. The horses themselves were long gone along with the original owners. When they arrived, Ty warned them that most of the people were asleep for the night. A bald man was there to greet them. While he exchanged a few quiet words with Ty, Elliot tapped Rose on the arm.   
  
“There’s a stall for you two to sleep in.”   
  
“Stall?” Martha looked around the barn. It was dark except for a small patch of light near the door they’d entered through. There were about ten stalls in total, all closed tight. The entire place was silent except for the hum of a generator and, faintly, several snores. “You’re living in here?”  
  
He nodded and motioned for them to follow. Rose glanced back at Ty and the bald man before following Elliot down the dark row of stalls. He led them to the opposite end of the barn and unlatched the door to a stall on the right. He stepped inside and leaned down to pick something up from the floor. There was a creaking sound, and then the lantern he was holding lit up, illuminating the stall.  
  
There were two cots in the corner, each with a pillow and a blanket. There was little space to maneuver, and a single crate was wedged between the two cots for storage.  
  
“Don’t use the lantern for longer than you have to,” he advised as handed Martha the lantern. “We’re gettin’ short on batteries.”   
  
“Got it,” Martha said.   
  
He stood in the doorway as they shucked their packs and jackets. Rose removed the gun holster rom around her shoulder and set it down as well. Elliot sniffed once. “I’ll make sure they save you some breakfast.”   
  
Rose smiled. “Thank you.”  
  
Elliot gave her a tiny smile in return then pulled the stall door shut. They listened to the sound of his footsteps receding then they heard the quiet scraping of another stall being rolled slowly open and then shut.   
  
Rose sank down into the cot on the left and pulled her boots off.   
  
Martha set the lantern down between their cots and sighed, drumming her fingers against the edge. “I wasn’t expecting to see him again,” she murmured.  
  
Rose chuckled. “Me neither.”   
  
“His cancer’s gone.”  
  
“The Doctor didn’t tell you?” asked Rose.  
  
Martha shook her head.  
  
She glanced around. Places where there should be holes and viewing windows had been mostly boarded over but she figured they were far from soundproof and, even now, this wasn’t something that should get around. “He offered Elliot the cure for leukemia right before we left,” she whispered. “He took it.”  
  
Martha nodded slowly and licked her lips.   
  
Rose lifted off the cot enough to pull the blanket back then stretched out on it. The pillow smelled like it’d been in storage for a while, and it had a few lumps, but considering some of their usual sleeping arrangements, she wasn’t going to complain. The blanket didn’t quite feel like enough for the cool summer evening so she unzipped her blanket roll and pulled out the quilt she’d found in a house in the Carolinas and draped it over the blanket. Martha followed her lead before snuggling down into the cot.  
  
“Dunno, Rose. I think I’d give this place four stars.”   
  
Rose smiled. “At least three. I’ll wait ‘til breakfast before handing out that next star.”  
  
“You mind if I…?” Martha reached for the switch on the lantern.  
  
“Go ahead.”  
  
Martha shut the lantern off and they were engulfed in complete darkness. For a few seconds, the whole place was eerily quiet. Then a horrifyingly loud snore ripped through the silence and someone cursed in surprise. A feminine laugh trickled through the air.   
  
“Someone needs to sew his fuckin’ mouth shut,” a man groused.   
  
Martha snickered quietly.   
  
“You two ladies better not snore!” the same man added just a little louder. “I don’t care who y’are, I’ll come over there and stuff a sock in your mouth.”   
  
“Oh, will you shut yours, Kenny,” a woman snapped. “You’re makin’ more noise than anyone.”   
  
“Why don’t y’all come over here and make me?” the first man challenged.   
  
The snoring cut off quite abruptly. “Whosawhat?”   
  
“Great, now he’s awake, too,” another woman complained.   
  
“Not my fault!”  
  
“Damn well is!”  
  
“Thefucksgoinon?”   
  
“Shut uuuuupppp!” a child moaned.   
  
“Alright, next one who talks gets latrine duty,” the bald man barked. No one uttered a single peep after that.   
  
Rose had to press her hand to her mouth to as her shoulders shook with laughter, but she couldn’t quite hold back a little sputtering laugh.   
  
“ALRIGHT. Who was that?!”  
  
“S-sorry!” Rose managed to call out. “That was me.”   
  
The bald man sighed loudly but didn’t deliver her sentence so she figured she was probably off the hook.   
  


~*~

  
  
The next morning, Rose was awoken by a knock on the door.   
  
“C’min…” she said around a yawn.   
  
The door slid open, revealing a shapely woman with thick brown hair and a warm smile. “Good morning,” she greeted. She held two bowls in her hands. “I’m Erica. So, Rose and Martha. Who’s who?”   
  
Martha raised her head blearily. “’m Martha. What time is it?” she mumbled.  
  
“Around nine-thirty. Your little guard dog wouldn’t let us wake you up until now.”   
  
Rose sat up, rubbing her eyes. Her sleepy mind took a few moments to process the woman’s words. “Mmm…guard dog?”   
  
“Elliot,” Erica said, entering the stall. “Never seen that boy take a shine to anyone so quickly.” She handed them each a bowl with a spoon. “Must’ve taken him near a week before he even would look any of us in the eye when he first showed up.”   
  
“We–” Martha yawned loudly. “Ah, sorry. We already knew him.”   
  
Erica raised her eyebrows but didn’t comment.  
  
Rose looked down at the contents of her bowl. Scrambled eggs and beef jerky. Not bad, considering. She spooned the eggs into her mouth and was only slightly disappointed, but not surprised, to find they had no cheese in them. Eggs would be hard enough to come by, never mind cheese.   
  
“Do you have chickens around here?” Martha asked, mirroring Rose’s train of thought.   
  
“Yep. Brought ‘em from one of the neighboring farms about a month ago. Good protein.”  
  
“Yeah, tell me about it.” Rose said. “Oh, that reminds me. Is anyone here injured?”  
  
Erica shifted her weight, putting one hand on her hip. “You talkin’ cuts and bruises or serious stuff?”  
  
“Both.”  
  
“Well, ain’t a body here without some damage. Nothing life threatening, though. Why, you a doctor?”  
  
“I am,” Martha said. “Any infections, broken bones, sprains, burns?”  
  
“I’ll ask around. Though as far as I know, no one’s got anything broken.” Erica turned to go. “I’ll leave you to your breakfast. We have a shower set up around the corner if you’d like one after, and we’ll see if we can’t find you some new clothes as well.”   
  
Now that it was daytime, they could see that the barn was bigger than they’d originally thought. This row of stalls seemed to be the living quarters but the other row of stalls that ran perpendicular to the other was used for storage, cooking, a playroom, and for the showers.   
  
These days you were lucky to find running water that didn’t come from a well so at least having a cold shower was better was better than the alternative. They’d already had to bathe in a lake, a spring, and a river. The spring, at least, got them decently clean. Nothing like a shower, though.   
  
As it turned out, it wasn’t a real shower. They’d hung up shower curtains, dividing the stall into two parts. Each area had a garden hose with a nozzle that sprayed water out much like a shower. The handle on the nozzle was held permanently down by duct tape, and it hung on a hook by rubber bands. To operate, all one had to do was pull on a cord hanging near it, and water sprayed out for ten seconds. Not the most advanced setup but definitely ingenious.   
  
After they were done with their showers, they returned to their stall and each of them found a small container of mouthwash, a hairbrush, and a pair of jeans and a tank top waiting for them on their cots. They dressed in their fresh clothes and took turns with the brush. Rose’s jeans fit well enough but they were way too long and she had to roll them several times before she could slip her shoes on.  
  
They found Elliot sitting against the stall door across from theirs when they emerged, doodling on a pad of paper.  
  
“Good to see that hasn’t changed,” Martha said.  
  
Elliot glanced up and smiled at her. “Yeah.”   
  
He stood up, tucking the pad of paper under his arm. “Can I talk to you, Rose?”  
  
“Sure.”   
  
“Lemme go put this away.”  
  
Elliot headed down the row of stalls towards the one he stayed in. Martha cleared her throat quietly. “I’m gonna go find that bald guy and find out a bit more about this area. See if we can make ourselves useful in the usual way. You mind if I start story time without you?”  
  
Rose nodded. “If you need to.”   
  
“See you in a bit.”   
  
Martha passed Elliot as he reemerged from his stall and he paused to watch her go before turning to Rose. He motioned for her to follow him and he led her out a back door.   
  
The property was huge and surrounded mostly by woods. Several large fenced-in pastures stretched out behind the barn. There was a yard with a large oak and a tire swing dangling from it that a group of children were playing around. A man sat nearby, keeping a close eye on them. The farmhouse itself looked completely ransacked. Windows were broken, their drapes hanging outside and fluttering in the wind. The screen door had been completely yanked off its hinges, but the front door remained the same.  
  
“We did that,” Elliot said, following her gaze. “If anyone comes across this place, we want it to look abandoned and raided. We don’t even try to keep the barn lookin’ nice. Well, on the outside.”  
  
They were heading towards the pastures.   
  
“Smart. …So how’s it work around here? Do you all have chores? Are you self-sustaining or do you have to go scavenging? Is there an escape plan? How many people are here?” Rose asked, peppering him with questions.  
  
Elliot didn’t miss a beat. “Yes. Scavenging. Yes. 32. 34 now,” he added.   
  
“You know we’re not staying, right?”   
  
He sighed. “Yeah. But you’ll at least stay a few days, right?”  
  
“We’re here until we can get a ride to the next camp,” she answered honestly.   
  
“Oh.”   
  
Rose glanced down. His head was ducked and his body seemed to have deflated. Better change the subject. “This… pretty far from Bridgeton. How did you end up here?”  
  
Elliot shrugged. “I just…knew where to go.”   
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“Something–instinct, maybe my mojo–was guiding me. I always had this sense of which direction to travel in. We’ve been in with other survivor groups but nothing ever felt right. So I told ‘em I was gonna keep going, with or without them. They followed each time. Eventually we wound up here. I still don’t feel like it’s time to leave.”  
  
“They? Your parents?” she asked. He nodded. “So, do they know you’re psychic?”  
  
“They do now. It was the only way to get them to listen.”   
  
They were nearing the fence to the pasture. Inside the grass was tall and wild, having been left unattended for weeks. Elliot heaved himself up, swinging his legs through the space between the top and middle rails, and dropped to the other side. Rose opted to simply climb up and over. Her feet hit the ground with a soft thud and they kept walking. He led her clear to the other side of the pasture, and then sat down against a fence post.   
  
She turned around and looked at the barn. The children were still with their chaperone by the tree. She could see Martha and the bald man sitting on the house porch. She spotted a few other adults near the barn but didn’t recognize any of them.   
  
“This is my favorite spot.” Elliot told her quietly. “The distance muffles the noise.”  
  
Rose eased herself down to the ground. “What’s it like?”  
  
“It’s like…” He opened and closed his mouth several times, trying to find the words to describe it. “It’s like standing in the middle of a crowded room with ear buds in my ears playing quiet music. I hear what’s going on around but there’s always that second layer of noise. And it’s not even always noise. Faces, images, sometimes sounds or smells, or even emotions.”   
  
“Sounds like a pain.”   
  
He sighed, his head bobbing up and down.  
  
“Elliot…last night, when I told you we were more alike than you realize… I… I’m not exactly…the same as I was before.”  
  
“I know. Your mind is weird. It’s so big and bright but it’s silent. I’m not getting anything from you at all.”  
  
“I have some pretty good defenses up.”   
  
He shook his head. “No, it’s not that. I remember how the Doctor’s mind was once he was out of the watch. He had his own barriers up good an’ tight, I could barely tell he was there. But with you, it’s there and it’s so obvious but it’s silent.” He scowled. “I don’t like it.”   
  
Rose arched her eyebrows and stretched her mind towards his. It connected with his, like when she spoke mentally with the Doctor, rather than slipping into it.   
  
He jumped in surprise. “Whoa!”   
  
_How about now? Hear anything?_  
  
“How’d you _do_ that?”   
  
_You can do it, too. You’re telepathic after all. All you have to do is think at me._  
  
He was quiet for a full fifteen seconds. “Anything?”  
  
She shook her head. _Your mind is right up against mine. Feel it?_ He nodded. _You have to direct your thoughts there. I can’t really explain it any other way._  
  
Nodding again, he closed his eyes and pressed his lips firmly together. The seconds flowed by in silence. And then…  
  
 _Testing, testing. Helloooo…  
  
There! _ She thought, grinning at him when he opened his eyes.   
  
_I think I got it now.  
  
Good._   
  
“Can I do that with anyone?” he asked aloud.   
  
“I don’t know.” She withdrew her mind, gently severing their connection. “I can talk to Martha but I have to actually go into her mind. Yours I just connected with, like the Doctor’s. I guess that’s ‘cos you’re telepathic.”  
  
Elliot twisted his mouth thoughtfully. “How do you connect?”  
  
“Took me ages to figure out, lemme tell you. I can sense minds, telepathic fields, stuff like that.”  
  
“I can, too,” Elliot said.  
  
“Right. And I reach for them with my mind, sort of…” She raised her hands and mimed grabbing onto something in front of her. “First thing you gotta do, though, is reach out.”  
  
He cocked his head to the side. “How?”   
  
“I dunno. Um. How do you pick up information from people?”  
  
“Usually it’s random. But if I focus on someone in particular, I can get more from them.”  
  
“Focus on me then,” she instructed, rotating so she faced him.  
  
He twisted around so he was facing her and his eyes bore intently into hers. They sat that way for thirty seconds, Elliot with a look concentration on his face that grew more intense with every second, and Rose trying not to fidget, before he finally exhaled in a loud rush of air. He shook his head. “I can’t do it.”  
  
“Weird. The Doctor has to be touching people to get into their minds but he can initiate distant contact with another telepath.”  
  
Elliot sighed and shifted so his back was against the post again. He stretched his legs out in front of him, drumming his fingers on his leg. “Y’know,” he said after a moment. “Now that I think about it, the Doctor only told me I was telepathically receptive. He said my projection was…limited. Yeah, that was it. I can pick up on loads of stuff but I can’t really send anything.”  
  
“Except for when I initiated the contact,” Rose pointed out. “You could communicate while I had the channel open. No other human I’ve spoken to telepathically can do that. It’s all one way unless I actually go deep enough into their minds to access their thoughts.”   
  
“So I won’t be able to talk with anyone other than you. Well, dang.” He twisted his mouth again. “That could’ve been useful, y’know?”   
  
“Oh, I know.”   
  
He laughed. “Yeah.”   
  
They lapsed into silence. Rose lifted her head to the sky, shielding her eyes from the mid-morning sun with her hand. Martha would probably start worrying soon if she didn’t come back. “So, Elliot. Why did you really bring me out here?”  
  
Elliot sighed. She looked down at him. He fiddled with his fingers in his lap and said nothing for a minute. “Where’s the Doctor?” he whispered. “I saw the broadcast that day and I saw him…”  
  
“Aged.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Rose sighed, ducking her head, and her heart ached.   
  
“I’m sorry,” he apologized quickly. “Didn’t mean to make you sad.”  
  
“Don’t worry about it,” she mumbled. “He’s…he’s still on the _Valiant_. He’s a prisoner. But don’t–don’t worry. He’s got a plan. That’s why me an’ Martha are traveling. We’re helping him.”   
  
Elliot fixed her with an owlish look. “I want to help.”  
  
“The first thing we have to do is convince your people that the Doctor’s real and that he can save us.”  
  
“How?”   
  
Rose grinned. “We tell stories about him. You can definitely help him with that.”  
  
He considered this. “Well. My folks have always wondered how I became cancer-free.”  
  


~*~

  
  
“So, let me get this straight. You two are time travelers that go all around time and space with an alien that’s nearly a thousand years old on a ship that’s bigger on the inside. Five years ago, that ship disguised your alien so he was a human pediatrician at the hospital where my son was a patient, to hide from those terrorists who wanted to kill him, and you two were in disguise there as well. As a human, he had dreams about his real self, which he read to my son, and my son illustrated. His mind was trapped inside that watch, you left it behind accidentally, Elliot found it and put two and two together. When you went back for it, you found Elliot, and broke him out of the hospital so he could lead you to the human version of the alien. And after he was back to normal, the alien gave my son the cure for cancer as a thank you gift and explained the _psychic_ stuff to him.” Mrs. Hunter looked between Rose, Elliot, and Martha. “Am I right so far?”  
  
The three of them nodded.  
  
“And now you’re an agent for Britain’s version of Men in Black and you’ve got _psychic_ powers. Your alien’s psychotic arch-nemesis has taken over the world and is holding him prisoner up on the flying ship. But he’s sent you two on a mission around the world to recruit the entire human race for an asinine plot that’s more of a long shot than Papua New Guinea ever winning a medal in the Olympics.”  
  
Elliot nodded. “Yeah.”   
  
“Pretty much,” Martha added.   
  
“Except I don’t have psychic powers.” Rose corrected.   
  
Mrs. Hunter gave her a withering look.   
  
She, her husband, and every single other member of the group were sitting in the hallway outside the living stalls. Martha, Rose, and Elliot stood in front of all of them near the stall where the two women were staying. The boy had John Smith’s journal in one hand and the fob watch in the other. They’d spent the better part of an hour explaining their shared history to everyone and it had gone well, for the most part. His mother looked like she seriously needed an aspirin. Maybe a drink.   
  
“Why did you never tell us?” his father demanded.   
  
“Tell you what? That an alien gave me a magic pill from the future? You’d have put me in the nut house. Assuming you even listened to me,” he added spitefully.   
  
His father frowned disapprovingly at him. “Anything else you haven’t told us?”   
  
“Duh,” he muttered in a tone that said he didn’t plan to.   
  
One of the men in the group raised his hand. “So–this Doctor guy really gave you the cure for cancer?”   
  
Elliot nodded. “Yeah. All it took was one little pill and my cancer was completely gone within weeks. Hasn’t been back since.”  
  
“And he defeated the Cyberman invasion last year,” Rose added. “And the aliens at Christmas. And so many other aliens, monsters, and people too that have threatened Earth in the past and the future.”  
  
“What about the Master?” asked a woman. “Can he stop him?”  
  
“Oh, yes. But he can’t do it alone and me an’ Martha–it’s our job to get him what he needs.”  
  
“And that’s why we’re here.” Martha finished the story telling.  
  
One of the little children raised her hand in the air, waving it around to get their attention. Martha pointed at her. “I wanna help!! That big jerk took my sister!”   
  
“Then you gotta tell everyone about the Doctor. Give them hope to last the coming months. And then when the time is right, everyone has to believe he can.”  
  
“Like in _Peter Pan_?” laughed one of the older women. “What? Have none of you read the book? Tinker Bell was dying and Peter called on all the world’s children to proclaim their faith in fairies, which gave her the strength she needed.”  
  
“Actually–” Rose glanced at Martha “–that’s not far off.”   
  
The woman stared at her, dumbfounded.  
  
Rose waved her hand. “Don’t worry about that part. This is what you need to know. In a little under a year, the time will come that the Master is going to set out to conquer the galaxy. All those labor camps are for building the warships. The Doctor’s fought against the Master before–he’s always been very grand and dramatic. When it comes time, there will be a big spectacle. He’ll use a countdown, we’re certain of it. That’s when you have to be ready. And when the clock hits zero, you have to _believe_. Think of him, only of him, and believe in him. If every single person does that the exact same time, the psychic power it releases will be…” She paused, searching for the right word.  
  
“Unfathomable,” Martha finished. “And since the Doctor’s expecting it, he’ll be able to harness it. It will give him the strength the Master took from him and then we can win.”  
  
Most of the she small crowd exchanged glances, muttering to one another, though a few of them kept their eyes riveted on the trio standing up front. While they talked, Rose took the opportunity to slip her mind up against Elliot’s. The next part of their routine was important and she didn’t want to risk their psychic getting wind of the lie and having it show on his face.  
  
 _Elliot, listen,_ she thought. _This next part is not entirely true but it’s very important. So if you see anything from Martha about it, don’t react.  
  
…Alright_ , he agreed after a moment.   
  
She looked at Martha and nodded once. Martha held up her hand. “But there’s more.”   
  
Rose waited until everyone had quieted and was paying attention before going on. “There’s this organization called UNIT. You might’ve heard of them. They knew that certain members of the Doctor’s species, like the Master, could pose a serious threat to the world’s safety. So they came up with a weapon that can kill them.”  
  
“Why not just use a normal gun?” Elliot asked curiously.  
  
“Because they can _recover_ from that,” Rose replied. _Nice timing_. “But this will kill him stone dead. The Doctor’s always shown him mercy in the past but this time he went too far. The Master has to be put down once and for all. So he sent us after the weapon.”  
  
“Yeah!” a few people the crowd shouted in agreement.   
  
“And remember, because this is very important, the Master can never find out about the belief and faith part of the plan. If he does, we’re ruined. You have to stress that. He already thinks we’re looking for a way to kill him. So make sure you always tell people that we’re looking for a weapon to do it with.”  
  
“What kind of weapon?” asked one of the men.   
  
Martha shook her head. “Can’t tell you that. We can’t risk that getting out.”  
  
The man nodded. “Yeah, I get it.”  
  


~*~

  
  
After dinner, Lawrence informed Rose and Martha that they had a truck ready to take them to the next drop off point that night. Martha agreed to pack their things while Rose went to go break the news to Elliot. Her quick search around the barn proved unsuccessful so she headed out to the pasture. Sure enough, when she got close enough, she spotted Elliot’s sitting in the flattened area of grass, doodling away.  
  
He didn’t look up as she approached. Or when she sat down next to him.  
  
He was drawing her and the Doctor, she realized after a moment. She recognized the dress–based off yellow hollyhock, if she remembered right–and the sash around the Doctor’s torso. They were sitting together on a log. He had a box on his lap and she was touching the necklace around her neck.   
  
Rose reached up to finger the thin chain before pulling it out from under her shirt. “Elliot.”   
  
He glanced up then did a double take. A smile spread slowly across his face as he recognized it. “So, did he pop the question?”   
  
She shook her head. “No. But that’s alright. We love each other. I’m never gonna leave him, he’ll never leave me. That’s enough.”  
  
Elliot made a quiet ‘hmm’ and returned to his drawing. She watched his pencil travel across the paper for a few minutes while silently arguing with herself.  
  
“We’re leaving,” she finally blurted out. His pencil stilled. “Tonight. Lawrence says the truck’s all ready to go.”  
  
“I want to go with you.”  
  
“Elliot…”  
  
“Please!” he begged. “I want to! I can help you!”  
  
“No. You can’t. Me and Martha have to go on by ourselves. If you come with us, you’ll just get yourself caught our killed–us too.”  
  
“No I won’t. I’m psychic remember? I can sense a UCF a mile away.”  
  
“Elliot, no. Besides, your parents would stop you. Or try to come with us. And five is way too many.”  
  
He exhaled through his teeth and slammed his fist into the ground. “Last time I was too young and too sick. This time I’m just a burden!”  
  
“It’s not that. We have a way of staying under the radar that won’t work for you. We can literally stand in a crowded room and no one will see us. Except you, maybe,” she added thoughtfully. Elliot still looked upset so she put her hand over his. “But you can still go and tell the stories. You’ve got a whole journal of them in there. Use your skills for avoiding the UCFs and travel from group to group if that’s what you want. We didn’t get to go to Ohio; we’ll miss most of Indiana and Michigan as well. The people there need to know. You can tell them, Elliot.”  
  
“But I want to go with you.”   
  
“You want to save the world.”  
  
His answering nod was almost imperceptible.  
  
Rose sighed. “And you will. Just like last time. You’ll be helping the Doctor get what he needs. …Me an’ Martha have got a long way to go. We have to keep heading west until we reach Britain again. There is every chance we won’t make it. So we need as many people along the way to receive the message. You can do that, Elliot.”  
  
“I–”  
  
His voice died abruptly. The color drained from his face, leaving him deathly pale, and his eyes flipped wide. A second later, he screamed loudly.   
  
“Elliot?!”  
  
Elliot scrambled to his feet, abandoning his sketchpad, and raced for the barn. Rose was only half a second behind him. She shouted after him, demanding to know what was wrong, but he seemed incapable of forming coherent words.   
  
Then suddenly the peaceful afternoon was shattered by the unmistakable sound of gunfire.   
  
“NO!” Elliot cried.   
  
Rose lunged forward and slammed into Elliot. They both fell to the ground and she heard the air rush out of his lungs. While he struggled to recover, she pinned his arms to the ground and used the weight of her torso to pin his back to the ground.   
  
“Get off me!” he yelled.  
  
More gunfire and shouting filled the air.   
  
“No! It’s too late! If you go back now you’ll only get yourself killed!”  
  
“My parents are in there!”  
  
“It’s too late. I can’t let you die, too.”  
  
“Please, _please_ –”   
  
“You can’t help them,” she hissed. “ _I’m sorry_.”  
  
He shook his head in denial and continued to struggle against her hold. Rose hissed between her teeth angrily. She needed to get her necklace around him as well but in order to do that she’d have to let go of his arms. The second she did that he’d throw her off and be gone.   
  
“Elliot, listen to me. I can hide you but I have to let go of you for a moment in order to do it. But you can’t run. If you do, they’ll just kill you. You’re no help to anyone dead.”  
  
“Rose, please… What about Martha?”   
  
_Martha!_ She gasped and immediately her mind was racing out, seeking her friend’s familiar one among the others. It took her roughly ten seconds to locate it and she slipped right in. But she didn’t stop at the outer level. She pushed deeper into the area of Martha’s mind where here thoughts were.   
  
Martha felt the intrusion. _Rose is that you!?  
  
Yeah it’s me. I can hear you. Where are you?  
  
You’re in my mind?! You said you’d never–oh what am I–never mind. I’m behind the barn behind some bins. I ran out the back the moment I heard the gunfire. They’ve got this place surrounded, I don’t know if I can get past the men.   
  
Try. Get out of here–into the woods. Hide. I’ll find you as soon as I can.  
  
Got it. _  
  
Rose realized Elliot was talking and she withdrew her mind from Martha’s to focus on him.  
  
“No, no, no, no, no,” he whimpered. “They’re–they’re…no they’re…rounding them up. Into the barn.”  
  
“Elliot, listen to me. They’re probably going to search out here soon. We need to go _right now_ or we’re both going to die. But you have to stay with me. Do you understand?”  
  
She waited for a tense moment and then he nodded his head. She shifted off him and grasped his hand. Tearing her necklace open, she fed it under his wrist then up and around once more, then looped it around her own and sealed it shut.   
  
“Keep quiet,” she hissed, pulling their linked wrists close to their bodies. “This is a perception filter–it’s what keeps people from noticing the TARDIS. We’re not invisible so if you do anything to attract attention, they’ll see us.”  
  
“Okay,” he whimpered.   
  
She rose to her feet, but kept low, scanning the property quickly. From what she could tell, there were maybe twenty UCFs surrounding the barn with their guns trained on every single possible exit. But they weren’t looking out to the pastures. She and Elliot could probably make it unseen to the woods but they’d have to go over the fence to get there and that could be their undoing.   
  
Rose swallowed. They’d have to try. If nothing else, she could dissolve part of the bottom rail and they could slip out. “Let’s go. But keep low and don’t move too fast.”   
  
He let her pull him along through the pasture to the edge of the woods. Rose alternated between watching the UCFs and scanning the woods. When they reached the end of the pasture, Rose pulled him back down to the ground. They twisted around so they could see the barn. Elliot let out a single cry just before three gunshots went off and Rose could hear the horrified screaming from all the way out there. Elliot’s breaths were coming in quick, shallow pants.   
  
“What happened? Can you tell?”  
  
“They’re–they’re asking…for you. They know you came here.”  
  
Rose froze. That vehicle last night! But how? There was no way they’d been seen. Between the cover of night, the grass, and their perception filters, there was no way… Unless, of course, they’d caught up with their driver and she’d betrayed them. Or figured out where they’d come from and the people there had betrayed them.   
  
“But no one’s telling them anything. So they–they killed the little kids…Hailey, Jake, Willie…”   
  
“What about now?”  
  
“…No. But they found the stall you were staying in. And my dad just…” Elliot fell silent, focusing on something he was seeing. “He told them that you’d already left.”  
  
“Did they buy it?”  
  
The answering gunshot seemed to knock Elliot’s breath clean from his chest. For a moment, he stared at the barn, and Rose could _feel_ the shock rolling off him in waves.   
Then he sobbed, fisting his hands in his hair, and gritted his teeth against a scream.   
  
Over the next five minutes, the gun fired periodically, and they had to sit there and listen, knowing that with each shot, another life inside the barn was ended. And with each shot, Elliot flinched, curling in on himself even more. She wondered if he could see it happening in his mind of if he’d completely blocked his abilities. Rose, usually the first to offer comfort, was hesitant to even squeeze the hand bound to hers by the necklace. Surely he blamed her. She was, after all, one of the reason’s they’d come here. But when she curled her fingers around his hand, he locked them in a vice grip and curled into her side, very much the scared little boy she’d known long ago. She put her free arm around him and hugged him as tightly as she could.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “ _I’m sorry_.”  
  
Eventually the gun stopped firing. The silence afterwards was almost worse. 


	65. Hunted

  
  
Both the barn and house were set ablaze just after sunset, getting rid of the bodies and a potential survivor camp for others in one fell swoop. All of Elliot’s possessions were destroyed, including the journal. So when Rose and Elliot found Martha, she stayed with him while Rose crept back out to the pasture to get the sketchbook and pencils he’d left behind. And he surprised them both later by pulling the fob watch out of his pocket.   
  
They couldn’t leave him behind to fend for himself, but they ran the risk of getting discovered if he wasn’t filtered like them. So they decided he’d have to be with one of them at all times, their wrists joined by a necklace, so the key’s filter covered both of them. He kept up well enough and he never complained about the pace, but just one day had utterly exhausted him. The next day however, he got up and got moving when they wanted to. He was obviously grieving and more than once they heard him sniffle quietly, but he didn’t cry or break down. Though whenever one of them hugged him or held his hand, he clung to them as if they might disappear any second.   
  
Halfway through their second day of walking, Elliot suddenly stopped. Martha felt the tug on her arm and turned to see him standing still with his head cocked to the side like a dog.   
  
“Rose!” she called without looking away.  
  
Rose jogged up behind her a few seconds later. “What is it?” Martha nodded at Elliot. “Oh,” Rose said softly.   
  
They kept quiet so he could focus on what he was hearing. The teenager frowned the tiniest bit and didn’t say anything for about thirty seconds. “People. At least a dozen.”  
  
Martha glanced at Rose. “Survivors or UCFs?”   
  
“They’ve got kids.” He glanced up. “I don’t think the Master recruits kids.”   
  
Rose nodded. “Good point. So, what do you think? Should we go?”   
  
“We were supposed to be heading to a group north of the farm next,” Martha pointed out. “Could be them.”  
  
“Could be. Alright, let’s go then.”  
  
She started off and Martha tried to follow, but she felt resistance and, glancing over her shoulder, saw Elliot hadn’t moved. His lips were pressed together in a thin line and he seemed to be debating something. Martha got Rose’s attention once more.   
  
“What is it?” Rose asked him.  
  
“Are you going to leave me there?” Elliot asked bluntly.   
  
The women glanced knowingly at each other. They both knew full well he couldn’t stay with them for long. Even if he managed to toughen up to the point where the length of their daily treks didn’t drain him, he would always have to remain tethered to one of them, or they ran the risk of him being seen and in turn, them as well. It wasn’t safe either way. But, then again, Martha thought, he clearly wasn’t in a good place right now. Abandoning him so soon after the slaughter of his parents and people wouldn’t help him at all. They might not know each other very well, his psychically gained knowledge of them aside, but at least they were familiar.   
  
“No,” Martha said.   
  
Elliot’s eyes narrowed at her. Was he trying to read her?  
  
“But, Elliot–” she bent at the waist so they were eyelevel, “–you know you’ll have to stay behind eventually.”  
  
He frowned reproachfully but mumbled, “I know.”  
  
Folding her arms, Rose drummed her fingers against her bicep thoughtfully. “Elliot. You said you knew when you were in the right place, right?” He nodded. “I want you to be honest with me. Do you still feel that?”  
  
Elliot shook his head. Martha glanced between them, knowing she was missing something significant.  
  
“If you feel it again, I want you to promise me you’ll tell me. It was right before and I know it’ll be right again.”  
  
“It was _right_?!” he exploded suddenly. “There was nothing _right_ about it! My parents were only there because of me and they were murdered! If we’d…if we’d just stayed in Owensboro they’d still be alive!”  
  
“You don’t know that,” Martha told him gently. “Just because there was a raid on the farm doesn’t mean your last camp wouldn’t have been raided.”  
  
“Yeah, you’re right,” he spat. “They were only there ‘cos of _you_!”   
  
They’d all been thinking it but no one had voiced it until now. Martha felt the sting of his words as if he’d physically struck her. For a moment, no one said anything. Then he exhaled shakily and covered his face with hands. “‘Course, that’s probably why I was there, too,” he mumbled a few seconds later.   
  
“We don’t know how they found you,” Rose said. “There was a vehicle following about a mile behind us but they couldn’t have seen us and the truck we were in never stopped.”  
  
“Someone betrayed you. A woman, brown hair, a scar on her left brow.” He lowered his hands. “Their leader was thinking about her.”  
  
There had been a woman matching that description in the group they were with prior to the farm. “Karen,” Rose hissed under her breath.   
  
Elliot blinked, the name meaning nothing to him. “He killed her. Bullet through one of her arteries. She died slowly while he watched.”  
  
“You got all that from him?” Martha asked in surprise.  
  
He blinked again. “He was thinking about her.”  
  
Martha felt nothing but a brief twinge of satisfaction at the traitor’s death. Once she might’ve felt some pity for her as well, but at this point, the only good traitor was a dead one. Whatever her motivations had been, she’d caused thirty-one deaths–eight of whom were children who hadn’t even reached adolescence–and had risked the fate of this world and countless others.   
  
Rose shrugged off her pack and sat down on the ground, stretching out her legs. Martha was unable to shed her pack due to her arm being linked to Elliot’s, but she still joined her on the ground. He, too, finally sat down.   
  
“We’re not going?” he asked with undisguised relief.  
  
“No, we are. But we need to discuss something before we go.”   
  
Elliot frowned warily. “Okay…”   
  
“This leader of theirs–” Rose folded her arms “–who is he? What did you get from him?”  
  
“Uh…” He opened and closed his mouth a few times. “I, um, I was kind of trying to avoid him. But, uh…he’s probably not much taller than you, Rose. Kinda reddish brown hair, a mustache, and, er, brown eyes. He had freckles on his cheeks,” he added thoughtfully. “I got the name ‘Moran’ from one of the others inside the barn with him.”  
  
“Let me see him,” she instructed. Elliot nodded once. They were both silent for a moment and Martha looked between them and sighed loudly. Once again she was out of the loop about something important.   
  
“Hmm,” Rose muttered. “Martha, you want to see this guy?”  
  
“I…sure.” A moment later she felt Rose’s mind dipping into hers and she _saw a stout man in the black uniform worn by all members of the Master’s personal army. His face was heavily lined from years of frowning. The confident way he held himself (as well as his gun) spoke of military background. His eyes were hard and uncaring, narrowed at whoever he was looking at._  
  
“I’ve never seen him before,” Martha said as the image vanished and Rose retreated. “How long’s he been following us, Elliot?”  
  
He gave her a look. “How should I know? I’m psychic, not God.”   
  


~*~

  
  
A week after the slaughter of Elliot’s people they were in Chicago. Rose point blank refused to leave him in the city filled with slave barracks, labor plantations and factories. The streets were constantly patrolled by UCFs. They spent three days moving through Chicago, talking with the survivors, and on the fourth day they were finally able to earn a meeting with the leaders of the resistance factions within the city. They were greatly impressed by the two women. Elliot sensed their opinions of him and quickly earned their respect with his clairvoyance.   
  
A woman called Fi helped them plan their route through the rest of the country. They had roughly fifteen weeks to get across the country and needed to cover as much ground as they could. They told her how they’d traveled in a giant ‘U’ shape from Baltimore, down through Georgia, and back to Chicago and she recommended they keep that up.   
  
They would travel northwest through Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota. From there the word could spread into Canada. Then they’d head down through a region known as ‘Tornado alley’ and hit Texas. Texas would be crucial to getting the word spread into the southern portion of the continent and down into South America. From Texas, they would slip through to Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Oregon. Finally, they would travel down the coastline to California, where they’d catch a boat across the Pacific.   
  
Sunset on the eve of their departure from Chicago, the three of them were relaxing in one of the rebel hideouts. It had been some sort of factory or delivery hub back in the old days. They’d been given a sleeping bunk on the second level of the stock shelves. Rose was curled up in a little ball, taking advantage of the rare time of peace for a nap. Martha was reading a book one of the rebels had given her.   
  
Elliot was drawing in his sketchpad when suddenly he suddenly froze before letting out a terrified cry. “He’s coming!” It echoed through the open space and attracted the attention of everyone within the vicinity.  
  
Rose was awake instantly, her eyes scanning the area for danger. Martha slammed her book shut.   
  
“Who’s he?” called a rebel on the ground.   
  
“Who’s coming?” Rose demanded.  
  
“The one who tracked you to my farm! Moran! He’s less than a mile away and he knows we’re here!”   
  
“How many are with him?”  
  
“I…uh…” he stammered and squeezed his eyes shut, focusing. “Dozens. Maybe sixty.”  
  
Martha swore loudly, rose up on her knees, and bellowed for the entire warehouse to hear: “WE GOT INCOMING! SIXTY ENFORCERS! ETA: THREE MINUTES!”  
  
Chaos exploded as everyone scrambled to prepare for attack. Rose, Martha, and Elliot had thirty seconds to frantically pack before they were all but dragged down from their bunks. Three rebels led them towards the loading docks where a jeep was waiting to get them out. Elliot’s screech was the only warning they had before an explosion rocked through the building, knocking most of them to the ground or into shelves.   
  
Rose was on her feet instantly, eyes blazing. Martha was up almost as quickly, along with the other rebels, but Elliot remained flat on the ground, shuddering. One of their escorts, a burly dark-haired man, looked at them for permission before scooping Elliot up and tossing him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.   
  
“Elliot, close your mind _now_!” Rose ordered sharply.   
  
He looked at her for a moment then nodded. She could tell the exact second he’d completely blocked himself off. Most of the panic left his eyes and the tension drained from his body. Poor boy.   
  
Before they could reach the docks however, UCFs began swarming in from that side as well. The man was forced to put Elliot down, and Martha quickly bound their wrists together with her necklace. They lost their escorts in the ensuing chaos, but the three of them managed to slip past the guards stationed at the door, and vanished down an alley. But not before Rose glimpsed a worn-faced man with reddish hair standing beside one of the vehicles, staring at the warehouse in anticipation.  
  


~*~

  
  
As it happened, Elliot was with them for longer than they’d predicted. He remained with them until the beginning of August when they were in South Dakota. They found a group living in an enormous cave system in the middle of nowhere. Rose and Martha wouldn’t have even found the cave entrance without Elliot, nor would they have known it was being guarded.   
  
The guard was pretty easy to convince, though Rose wondered how much of that was his unwillingness to leave two women and a young teen outside when night was falling.   
  
The cave system, they were told, was larger than they could imagine and after fifteen minutes in its tunnels, Rose believed it. She was assured she had not even glimpsed fraction of its true size. There were roughly eighty people in total living down there. Most of them lived in one of the large caverns deep within the cave not too far from an underground lake, though apparently a handful opted to live in smaller groups or on their own in separate caverns. They’d set up all manner of tents and huts not unlike the ones Rose remembered from Hooverville. They were very welcoming to the newcomers, offering them a pair of unused tents. Many of the residents contributed to make their bedding more comfortable. Their kindness only increased when Rose healed the broken arm of a boy who’d gotten too adventurous.   
  
They had an interesting setup. They did all their cooking at night near a shaft that led above, so any smoke would be difficult to see and wouldn’t lead anyone who saw it to the entrance. There were various lakes of all sizes throughout the cave and they used one near the camp for bathing, and another for drinking water. They’d even set aside a cave for a latrine–well away from the living areas.   
  
They remained there for little over a day, telling their stories and trading information about the situation up top for some food to take with them.   
  
Elliot was approached by some of the kids living there and many became interested in his drawings. He won the others over quickly by starting a little game. “Think of anything,” he told a little girl with blonde pigtails who reminded him of Macy, his best friend who he hadn’t been able to save. “Anything you want. Now picture it in your head.”  
  
She blinked her brown eyes at him curiously and a moment later, in his mind, he saw a fluffy white kitten holding a sock in its mouth. Smiling, he drew up a quick sketch and showed it to her. Her squeal of surprise was enough to earn the undivided attention of every single kid. Some of the older, more skeptical ones demanded he do the same for them. So he did.   
  
“Are you reading our minds?” a boy called Jamal demanded.   
  
Elliot grinned. “No.”   
  
Then it became a game of trying to stump him. Someone came up with a number and whispered for the other kids to hear while Elliot’s back was turned and another kid clamped her hands over his ears. Little did they realize that they just made it easier for him. Eleven minds linked through a psychic network thinking of the same thing at once in close proximity to him was basically the equivalent of them all shouting it out.   
  
Rose found him during one such game and perched on a rock a few yards off, not wanting to interrupt. He felt her mind slot into place next to his, like two pieces of puzzle connecting.   
  
_What’s going on?_ She asked in amusement. The whole telepathy thing was still peculiar. It was so unlike when he picked up on something clairvoyantly. If he heard a conversation from, say, Martha’s memory, he could hear exactly what she had. But when Rose spoke to him through her mind, her thoughts had no sound. So his mind made up for the lack of sensory input by reading them in her voice with the emotion they came with.   
  
_Showing off,_ he admitted. _I started a game of drawing what they were thinking and it’s turned into…this._  
  
Five kids stood in front of him with their hands behind their backs. One of them held a stone, put there by a kid while his back was turned and ears were covered. It was the red-haired boy fourth in line. He could tell even without the help of the smile tugging at the boy’s lips.   
  
_Are you trying to figure out who’s holding the rock?  
  
Yep.  
  
Want help?  
  
Nope. I got this. _ He grinned and pointed at the kid. “Ginger.”   
  
The looks of outrage, amusement, the scoffs and the laughs made it all worth it. He heard Rose laugh merrily in his mind.  
  
 _Why, Elliot. I do believe you’re making friends. I’m impressed._  
  
He looked over the shoulders of the kids in front of him and smiled at her. _I know how to. I just choose not to. Besides, right now, they think I’m just doing magic tricks or something._  
  
She cocked her head to the side. _Yeah, but, you’ve got them all enthralled. They’ll believe anything you say. Maybe you ought to ought to start the stories today._  
  
 _Really?_ He asked excitedly. They’d never let him take point, not since his family when they’d needed his introduction.  
  
 _Yeah. Go for it._  
  
Though it hadn’t lasted for more than a few seconds, their silent conversation hadn’t gone unnoticed.   
  
“What are you doing?” demanded a girl he knew was called Allie. She followed his gaze to Rose. “Is she your sister?”  
  
Elliot shook his head and broke eye contact with Rose. “No. She’s a friend from a long time ago. …We saved the world together once,” he added lightly.   
  
“Really?” gasped one of the younger kids.  
  
“Yeah. Stopped an alien invasion.”  
  
“Liar,” said another.  
  
“You think I’m a liar?” Elliot folded his arms. “A psycho has taken over the world with metals balls from outer space…and you think I’m lying about an alien invasion.”  
  
“No. I think you’re lying that you saved the world.”  
  
“Well…alright. I didn’t do the actual saving. But I helped.”  
  
“How?” asked a girl.  
  
He looked between the curious faces and resisted the urge to smirk. “Do you want to hear the story?”   
  
“Yeah!”  
  
“I do!”  
  
“Me too!”  
  
 _Good luck,_ Rose thought before detaching her mind.   
  
Rose was happy he was making friends. Seeing him smiling and interacting with the other kids was like a weight off her shoulders. So, really, it wasn’t much of a surprise when he approached her and Martha the next morning and told them this was the end of the road for him.   
  
Rose put her hands on his shoulders and studied his face intently. She knew he wouldn’t say something like this lightly. He’d made it quite clear he didn’t want them to leave him, but he had promised her he would tell her when and if he ever felt like they’d reached a place he should be. “Are you sure?”  
  
He nodded.   
  
“Absolutely sure?” Martha checked.  
  
“We just have to make sure you’re certain,” said Rose. “‘Cos once we’re gone, we can’t come back. You’ll have to stay here.”  
  
Elliot swallowed and rubbed his mouth with his hand. “I know. I’m staying. There’s a couple others here about my age that are taking care of themselves–and the other families keep an eye on ‘em. I can do it, too.”  
  
Rose nodded, lips pressed into a tight smile. She slid her arms around his shoulders and pulled him into a crushing hug. A moment later, she felt Martha’s arms come around his midsection. They held him tightly for a little bit until Rose felt him start to tremble. She drew back, placing her hands on his shoulders again, and saw that he had tears in his eyes.  
  
“Hey,” Rose murmured. “This isn’t goodbye forever. Once we’re finished and the Master’s defeated, we’ll come back for you. Okay? You can live with us on the TARDIS if you want or we’ll help you find any of your family that may have survived. But no matter what, I promise you, you won’t be alone. Sound good?”  
  
He shuddered as he inhaled but when he exhaled a few seconds later it was smooth. “Yeah. Sounds great.”   
  


~*~

  
  
The UCF soldier they knew as Moran wanted them and he wanted them bad. By the time they reached Texas, they had come to understand how far he was willing to go. By the time they were leaving the Fort Worth area, they’d already seen three slaughters reminiscent of the one on Elliot’s farm. Sometimes Moran and Co. brought along Toclafane as well. Those were the worst times. Rose and Martha both knew they were leaving a fairly clear trail for him to follow, and risking the lives of everyone they told, but they couldn’t stop. They _had_ to spread the word.   
  
They had a close call in Amarillo. The camp they were staying in was raided and Moran literally walked within two feet of Rose and Martha. They were cowering in the shadows while nearly everyone else was rounded up into the center. All the members of the camp were divided up into two groups: those who wouldn’t be good for labor (the elderly, ill, and young) and those who would. Screaming children were ripped from their parents, who were bound and forced into the backs of vans and trucks to be transported to slave camps.  
  
Then once they were gone, Moran ordered those who remained to be executed. “You are all weak and frail. You’re of no use to Our Master. …Unless…of course…you tell us where we can find Rose Tyler and Martha Jones.” He walked in a slow circle around the fifteen people on the ground. No one answered him, some even glared defiantly back at him. “Come on, now, we know they’re heading Northwest. In fact, our intelligence places them right in this area. If you tell me where they’re hiding I’ll be merciful.”  
  
“You can take your mercy and shove it up your ass!” snarled an old woman named Alice. “You lying bastard.”  
  
She, of course, died first.   
  
When everyone in the center was dead, they set the camp on fire. Rose and Martha nearly didn’t make it out and past the UCFs waiting to ambush any who’d managed to remain hidden.   
  
They managed to shake him off once they hit the Rockies. Many groups, big and small, were hiding within the mountains. They were willing to help Rose and Martha navigate through the treacherous landscape. They provided false trails for their relentless pursuers. As September flowed into October, the days grew colder, the nights longer, and their time allotted for America was running out. The heat they’d once cursed was now becoming precious. Sleeping outside became less and less desirable, and they were hard pressed to find somewhere warm to sleep each night. The tent they’d procured somewhere in Idaho did little for warmth and made them easier to spot if anyone should happen to come through.  
  
They had some close encounters with wild animals: bears, cougars, and the occasional wolf, mostly. Usually Rose could get rid of them just by telepathically terrorizing them or sometimes even just by looking at them with her eyes alight. Strangely enough though, the wolves seemed to be more curious than afraid, and while the more submissive ones would flee when she turned a threatening gaze on them, the more dominant ones tended to continue observing from afar. They never tested her, though.   
  
They caught wind of pursuit again early on in Oregon. A warning spread amongst the survivor networks that two women had arrived in the area, whom were being ruthlessly pursued by the Master’s people. If only Moran knew that his perseverance was actually _helping_ them! In the minds of the survivors and rebels, anyone wanted that badly by the Master was worth listening to. They were becoming notorious. Their legend was spreading.  
  
They were in Portland, Oregon for nearly a week, during which time they began to really plan the last leg of their route through America. They planned on hitting San Francisco and Los Angeles but their ultimate goal was San Diego since that was the location of the UNIT base that was, according to their cover story about the weapon, the real reason they’d been going cross-country. If any members of UNIT remained their assistance with the rumor would be useful. And, if they were lucky, UNIT could also help arrange transport for them.  
  
Japan would be their next stop, hopefully. China would follow, and then Russia. They’d heard rumors that Russia had been completely transformed into a shipyard with the entire surviving population either in work camps or hiding out in the brutal, northernmost reaches of the country. Other rumors said that parts of England, Africa, South America, and Australia had met the same fate. After China and Russia, they would then move down to the Middle East. The rough terrain and constant fighting in that region had made it dangerous before. They were afraid of what it would be like now. If they were lucky, they could avoid most of it by passing through the land between the Black and Caspian seas. Lastly, they would travel back up into Europe and, finally, back to England.   
  
They’d come so far already but they still had so much further to go. Rose’s body ached just thinking about it.   
  
After Portland, they were driven by jeep to a town called Yachats that had been left mostly untouched. The UCFs there were mostly ‘new’ recruits who’d joined up mainly for the benefits and, for the most part, didn’t give two shits about the Master and his agenda. They were the best sort, often handing over a portion of their rations to the people, and they could be relied on to distract and deceive their comrades who were on the other side. Rose and Martha didn’t quite trust them. They were careful to never impart the truth of their journey within earshot of any of them, and urged the others to be just as cautious unless they were absolutely sure the soldier could be trusted.   
  
The people of Yachats were kind enough to give them two bikes that had been saved from the metal collections. They were hardly at their peak condition but they worked, and in this day and age that was good enough. The sound of the sea filled their ears as they rode south on the Oregon Coast Highway. The air smelled of saltwater and reminded them of their week at sea months before, and the voyage that was yet to come.   
  
When they broke for lunch, they walked their bikes down to the beach and sat on the cool sand facing the water as they ate. The Pacific Ocean stretched before them as far as the eye could see, vast and foreboding. Turning around, the entirety of the United States loomed and reminded them of all they’d witnessed, the people they’d endangered, those they’d left behind, and those who wanted them dead. The ocean was a better view. The cool salty air whipped at their hair and stung their cheeks but neither of them minded.   
  
As dusk was falling, Martha noticed a small pillar of smoke wafting to the air from the forest. If they hadn’t become adept at recognizing signs of survivors, they would’ve mistaken it for a cloud. They stashed their bikes in two separate thick copses about five hundred yards apart, and then headed inland towards the smoke. It took about half an hour to reach it and they had to circle around a valley.  
  
“We’re gettin’ close now,” Rose puffed as she hefted herself over a fallen tree. She swung her legs around and dropped down to the other side. She heard the scrabbling of hands and feet against wood as Martha hauled herself up, but movement near a tree caught her attention.   
  
She left Martha to get herself over the tree and crept closer to the tree and the grayish-brown mass hanging from one of the limbs. It was a squirrel caught in a snare. They were definitely near a survivor camp. She scanned the immediate area to ensure there were no more traps, and then bounded over to the trapped animal.   
  
Rose examined the snare and discerned how to best free the squirrel without ruining the snare. She was just starting to work the squirrel’s body free when Martha cried out a warning. She spun around and found herself staring down the barrel of a shotgun.   
  
The wielder was a man probably in his forties, tall, decently built, with a five o’clock shadow. He was wearing a brown plaid shirt, long denim pants, and a belt full of dead of woodland critters. She glanced over his shoulder. Martha was backed against the fallen tree with her hands in the air, held there by a blonde woman with a shotgun. Rose returned her focus to the man in front of her and lifted her hands.   
  
“That’s mine,” he said.   
  
“Finders keepers,” Rose retorted.   
  
He arched his eyebrows. “Found you.”  
  
Rose curled her lip into a snarl.   
  
“What do you think, April?” The man asked.   
  
“They’re too scrawny to be the Master’s dogs,” the woman replied. “Looks like just a pair of thieves.”  
  
Rose shook her head. “I was going to take it to the camp.”  
  
The man’s face hardened. “What camp?”   
  
Rose pointed over her shoulder in the direction of the smoke. The man’s eyes flicked in that direction and he grinned. “That ain’t no camp.”  
  
She couldn’t help but smile. “Let me guess, you found some way to funnel the smoke away from your camp so anyone who spots it won’t be able to follow it to you.”   
  
The man blinked in surprise.  
  
“We’ve been all across the country, mate,” Martha said. “We’ve pretty much seen all the tricks.”  
  
He raised his eyebrows, glancing over his shoulder. “You’ve travelled the country? On your own?”  
  
“We’ve had help…but yeah.”  
  
“What’re your names?” the woman, April, questioned.  
  
“Rose Tyler.”  
  
“Martha Jones.”  
  
The man and woman exchanged wide-eyed glances and April slowly lowered her gun. The man, however, turned back to Rose and shoved his gun against her chest. “Prove it.”  
  
Rose took a deep breath and slowly, keeping her eyes on his, she reached for the knife in her belt. Gritting her teeth, she sliced the blade across her cheek, a nice, deep cut that would otherwise require stitches. She hissed softly as blood began to rush from the wound and she pressed her lips together to keep it out of her mouth. But before she had even returned her knife to its sheath, the blood flow had slowed. Then it stopped all together. She wiped the blood away with her hand so he could see her flesh knit itself back together with a faint glimmer shining beneath.   
  
The man exhaled loudly, gazing at her with awe, and lowered his gun. He turned to April and nodded slowly. “You’re real,” he said to Martha as if he couldn’t quite believe it.  
  
Martha waved. “Hi.”  
  
Rose picked the squirrel up and handed it to him. He thanked her, tucked it into his belt, and then handed her a rag from his pocket to wipe the rest of the blood from her face. “Calvin Rhodes. This is my sister, April. I suppose it wouldn’t be too weird if we offered you a place to stay and a meal for the night?”  
  
“Hell no, it’s not.” Rose smiled at him. “Thank you.”


	66. Wrath of the Wolf

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not even sorry.

  
“I gotta say,” Calvin said as they traveled through the forest. “I didn’t think you were real. I thought you were just a story or something to keep hope alive. Others, though, they believe.”  
  
“How many are you with?” Martha asked.  
  
“Twenty six,” April replied. A decent-sized group.  
  
They were set up in area that wasn’t quite a clearing but the trees were thinner. The outer perimeter was marked by a thin, nearly invisible length of wire with various noise makers attached. The ground had been trampled down into dirt from months of people walking and moving across it. Like many camps they’d seen, people had set up tents or simply made their own out of whatever they could. One tent had a doghouse beside it with a German shepherd that raised its head and sniffed curiously at them as they passed. The twenty-six people were mostly adults, though Rose did see a few children running between the tents.  
  
Word of their arrival quickly spread through the camp, and before long they had a crowd following behind. April and Calvin led them to a tent where white-haired couple were sitting on a pair of mismatched lawn chairs. A woman in her early thirties with bright red hair pushed her way to the front of the group. She was right about Martha’s height and Rose could see muscles beneath her black shirt.  
  
“Rhodes, just what kinda snares you settin’?” she teased in a voice far too high for her appearance.  
  
Martha took a step forward and extended her hand. “Hello. I’m Martha. This is Rose.”  
  
The redhead quirked her lips. “You’re a little far from home.”  
  
Out of the corner of her eye, Rose saw the old man look them up and down thoughtfully, pull a pipe from his pocket, and begin stuffing it with tobacco. “Jasper,” his wife hissed. “I told you to save that for special occasions.”  
  
“I think it is a special occasion,” Jasper retorted.  
  
“Beg pardon?”  
  
He pulled a small matchbook from his pocket, removed a single match and struck it amongst the side of the box, lighting his pipe. Returning the box to his pocket, he took a slow drag and smiled.  
  
“Martha _Jones_ , Rose _Tyler_ ,” he said. “Ain’t that right?”  
  
Rose nodded and waved. “Hello.”  
  
Audrey frowned suspiciously. “Are you sure it’s them?”  
  
“She sliced her cheek clean open, Audrey,” Calvin stated. “I watched it heal right before my eyes. It’s them.”  
  
A surprised murmur swept through the crowd, followed by silence. Then the twenty-six people erupted into noise and surged forward. Rose felt hands on her arms, her neck, her shoulder, her cheeks, and fingers tugged at her hair. Alarmed, she batted at their hands and backed away from the mass of shocked people.  
  
“Hey! Back off!” The redhead shouted, shoving the harassers away. When she was sure they weren’t going to come back, she relaxed her stance. “Honestly,” she huffed and turned to them. “The name’s Audrey. Welcome to our little paradise.”  
  
Rose and Martha were given a place to set up their tent and informed dinner would be in an hour or so. In the meantime, they unpacked their things and shucked their thick travelling jackets. A few people came by to offer them a variety of things like pillows and extra blankets or sheets for warmth. By the time they’d completely set up, they were probably the most comfortable people in camp. Every so often, Rose glanced at the tent nearest theirs where a little Native American girl was watching them curiously. She never came any closer but Rose could see a thousand questions written over her face.  
  
Dinner was comprised mostly meat they’d hunted, nuts, and berries, and was held around a ring of propane lanterns that provided little warmth. Rose and Martha answered some of the questions people had for them–where they were from, was it true they were being hunted, how far had they come, was it true they’d been onboard the _Valiant_ , where were they heading–and finished the night by telling them the story of how they’d met.  
  
The next morning, a woman came by their tent and asked if they would like their clothes washed. “They’re looking a bit worse for the wear.”  
  
“Pretty much everything we have is dirty,” Martha admitted sheepishly.  
  
“Hmm. Give me a few minutes and I’ll see if I can’t scrounge up some things for you to wear.” She disappeared from their tent and within minutes, just like the night before, people were arriving with random articles of clothing for them to try on. Leggings, jeans, skirts, shirts, jumpers, vests, jackets, and a pair of light brown fingerless gloves that fit Martha perfectly. For the most part they were all earthy colors, well-worn and had at least one small rip, but they all looked _warm_.  
  
Rose cobbled together an outfit comprised of deep gray leggings, a tan skirt that fell almost to her ankles with a slit up the side, a thick cream-colored shirt with knitted sleeves, and a greenish-brown vest, plus her own tan boots. She looped her belt with her gun and knife holster around her waist, concealing it beneath her shirt. She also strapped Jack’s vortex manipulator to her left wrist for safekeeping. She didn’t trust people to not snoop out of curiosity, and the manipulator wasn’t something that just anyone should mess with.  
  
The pair of jeans was almost the right size for Martha when she tightened her belt just a bit more than normal, she was able to keep them around her hips. She also chose from the pile of offered clothes a pair of leggings for underneath the jeans, a long-sleeved black shirt, and a dark green plaid shirt which she tied around her waist, just in case.  
  
Meals were served only twice a day, one midmorning and one after sundown, which was more than some survivor groups were able to manage. Rose and Martha soon found out that dinner the night before had only been eaten as a large group because of them. Usually people ate in smaller groups, or back at their tents.  
  
Before breakfast, the hunters would go out to check and reset their snares or try to track something down. The water collectors would head to the creek half a mile away to collect water and check the known safe berry bushes for ripe fruit. The gatherer would later be sent to collect berries or any other edible plants he could find. The cooks would skin and gut the animals. The pelts were given to one of the hunters who knew how to preserve them. The meat was cooked, and most of the remains were given to the dog. On laundry days, like today, certain men and women would go door to door to collect the washing, and would be escorted to the creek by one of the hunters for protection. There was always one lookout posted and the perimeter was routinely scouted. The two teenagers in camp were responsible for babysitting the four children. The old man often assisted, and his wife took care of any mending that needed done.  
  
“It’s a great setup,” Rose told Audrey, the group’s duly appointed leader, as they waited in the breakfast line. “Must’ve worked out real well up all summer. But it’s gettin’ colder. Soon there’s gonna be snow. What then?”  
  
Audrey had reached the front of the line. She accepted her plate and moved out of the way so Rose could get hers. She followed Audrey a ways away from the line.  
  
“We’ve been planning our move for a while now,” Audrey informed her. “We sent out a scouting group a little while ago and they just came back last week. They’re the ones who brought back the story about you two. There’s a small town about twenty miles from here that’s been abandoned. They said it looked like everyone had been rounded up. But there’s a lot of food and supplies and plenty of room and it don’t show up on any of our maps. So the chances of the Master and his forces coming back are slim. We’re heading there as soon as we can. We just need a bit more food stored up for the journey.”  
  
“Looks like we found you just in time then.”  
  
Audrey smiled. “Yeah.”  
  
Rose pressed her lips together, trying to decide whether or not to warn her. If they were leaving so soon, chances were they’d be long gone before Moran came this way. But, still, there was the chance they wouldn’t. Glancing around to make sure no one was paying attention, she lowered her voice, “Audrey…I should warn you. There’s a good chance that UCFs might turn up once we’re gone.”  
  
Audrey frowned. “What?”  
  
“There’s this one bloke. He’s a UCF–been tracking us since…God, Tennessee. Maybe longer. He’s killed entire camps just because they wouldn’t betray us. We’re only going to stay until tomorrow maybe, then we’re heading further south. You should get gone as soon as you can.”  
  
She was silent for a long minute, looking around at their camp forlornly. “Thanks for the heads up. Now, how about I get everyone rounded back up for you?”  
  
Less than five minutes later, Rose and Martha had their audience. They’d learned during their travels that it was best to get their message across as early as possible just in case they had to high tail it out of there quickly. Rose asked for anyone who had an injury or bad wound to come forward and six people–two men, one woman, the teenage boy with sandy hair, a freckle-faced redhead boy, and a small Native American girl with messy pigtails. While she worked on their injuries and ate breakfast, Martha told the listeners about what she liked to call their ‘Four Things and a Lizard’ incident.  
  
When their message had been delivered, along with the cover up, Audrey dismissed everyone to their duties. Their primary job done, Martha asked to be put to work in camp while Rose took a small nap to recuperate. A sprained wrist, some cuts, a burn, a broken thumb, and a puncture wound that’d been progressing merrily towards a dangerous infection was enough to tire her out. As Rose was settling down to sleep, Martha popped her head back in and informed her that she was going out with the gatherers and possibly later with the hunters.  
  
Rose came-to when the sun was high in the sky with the sound of quiet giggling and a pubescent voice hissing, “Come on you little rugrats, get away from there. Let her sleep.”  
  
“But she’s been asleep for _hours_!” a child protested.  
  
“Because she’s tired. Get lost!”  
  
“Maybe she’s wants to play!”  
  
Rose sighed and unzipped the flap on the door, peering through the protective mesh at the four surprised and sheepish children outside her tent. Kris, the sandy-haired teenager she’d healed earlier groaned quietly and slapped his face with his hand. “Oh, God, now you’ve done it.”  
  
“Who dares disturb my slumber?” she droned dramatically.  
  
Kris peeked over his hand at her. The children didn’t quite catch on that she was teasing and looked quite scared.  
  
“U-uh, Wayne, Sheena, Kari, and Brad,” stuttered the red-haired boy. “You fixed up my arm earlier.”  
  
Rose raised her eyebrows expectantly.  
  
“Um…do you want to play with us?” Kari, the pig-tailed Native American girl asked hopefully.  
  
“You don’t have to,” Kris interjected quickly.  
  
Part of Rose really wanted to tell them to bugger off so she could get some more sleep but their faces were adorably hopeful and she hadn’t had a romp in a while. So she allowed a smile to spread slowly across her face and reached for her boots. The children saw what she was doing and one let out a joyous whoop and another tugged at the zipper of her tent. Tiny hands pulled the flap open and their owners crowded forward eagerly until Kris pulled them away from the tent.  
  
“Give her some room to get out, guys.”  
  
Rose tossed him a grateful smile as she crawled out of her tent. “Right. What are we playing, then?”  
  
“How come you talk like Harry Potter?” Sheena, the little girl with curly brown hair, asked.  
  
Rose was quite used to that question–or one just like it–from children who had never heard anything other than their own accent outside television. She took it in stride. “’Cos I used to go to Hogwarts.”  
  
The looks on their faces were worth it.  
  
“No, I’m joking,” she said a moment later. Their shoulders slumped and they looked disappointed, except for Wayne, who looked disgruntled. “But Harry Potter’s from England, like me.”  
  
“Do you guys really drink _tea_?” Brad, the smallest boy with black hair, asked.  
  
“Every day.”  
  
He wrinkled his nose. “Eugh.”  
  
“Do you really eat ‘French fries’?” she countered.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Eugh.” She wrinkled her nose stuck out her tongue. Wayne and Kari giggled. Brad smiled.  
  
She felt a feather-light pressure on her head and swiveled her head around. Sheena was touching her hair. “Your hair’s like mine.” Rose’s hair was its natural brown color, messy from sleep and days without a decent brushing, and hadn’t been washed since the night they arrived in Yachats.  
  
“Used to be blonde,” Rose said. “Back when I could dye it whenever I wanted. And it was really soft and straight, too.”  
  
“Don’t worry. Nobody’s got good hair these days.” Kris tugged at his own shaggy hair. “Nobody’s got time or decent scissors.”  
  
“Can we play now?” Wayne demanded.  
  
“Fine, Wayne. What do you want to play?”  
  
He considered it for a second. “Hide and seek.”  
  
The rules were simple. You had to stay within the camp boundaries and you could only hide in someone’s tent if they said yes. Base was the large yew tree near the middle of camp–they led her over to it so she could see–and whoever was it had to count to fifty there. No going easy on them just because they were kids. No. peeking.  
  
Rose paused to tie her skirt up on one side so it wouldn’t hinder her as she ran then nodded that she was ready to play.  
  
“OnetwothreeNOTIT!” Kari screeched.  
  
“Not it!” “Not it!” “Not it!” “Not it!”  
  
“Not it!”  
  
“Wayne’s it.”  
  
The ginger boy heaved a sigh and turned around, hiding his face in his hands against the tree and started to count loudly.  
  
“Now we hide,” Sheena told Rose seriously before darting off. Brad and Kari were already gone.  
  
“Do you have to babysit them every day?” Rose asked Kris. He nodded. “Me and Stevie take turns sometimes.” He glanced at Wayne who had already reached twelve. “You better run. He won’t wait a second after fifty before he comes after you.”  
  
He took off running away from the tree and Rose headed in the opposite direction. The kids had an obvious advantage, living at camp all these months. They probably knew every nook and cranny someone their size could hide in. Narrowing those options down to one she could fit in wouldn’t take very long. She spotted the elderly couple, Jasper and Sandra, sitting outside their tent in their lawn chairs with a basket of clothes between them. Sandra had a shirt in her lap and she appeared to be mending it.  
  
Rose ran up to them, glancing over her shoulder at the base tree. “Can I hide in your tent?” she asked.  
  
Sandra raised her eyebrows. “The kids roped you into hide ‘n seek, didn’t they?”  
  
Rose nodded.  
  
“Sure. Just try not to get dirt on the blankets.”  
  
She nodded in thanks and ducked into their tent, squishing herself into the small corner next to the door. Outside, she heard the couple shifting their chairs around and, glancing out, realized that they’d blocked her from view. Sandra winked at her over her shoulder.  
  
The next few minutes were relatively quiet. She heard one of the kids shriek playfully somewhere on the other side of the camp but other than that, nothing. About five minutes after she’d crawled into the tent, she heard Wayne’s voice just outside. “Have you seen Rose?” he asked.  
  
“Rose?” Sandra asked. “Who’s Rose?”  
  
“That lady that showed up yesterday.”  
  
“Oh, yeah, she went out gathering with Kirsten and them earlier.”  
  
“No,” he sighed. “The other one. The one who can heal people.”  
  
“Oh. Her. Nope,” Jasper replied, popping the ‘p’ in a way that reminded Rose of the Doctor. For a moment, her breathing stopped and her chest ached with a pain as familiar as the sound of her breathing.  
  
“You sure?” Wayne asked, suspicion evident in his tone.  
  
“Well, you know us old folks. Memory’s not what is used to be. But I don’t think I saw her go into my tent about five minutes ago and not come out.”  
  
“Oi!” Rose protested loudly, scrambling to get out of the tent. Wayne cried out triumphantly. She darted past the gleeful pair on their lawn chairs and made a beeline for base. Wayne chased after her but she was faster from her years as a time traveler, Torchwood agent, and her months on the run, and she was at the yew tree before he could even get close to her. Everyone else was already there and they cheered her on as she neared.  
  
Rose slapped her hand against the gnarly bark and spun around. “Safe!” shrieked Kari.  
  
Wayne slowed as he neared the tree and doubled over with his hands on his knees. “No–no fair,” he panted. “You’re like a freaking ninja or something.”  
  
“Not a ninja,” she promised. “So does that mean he’s it again?”  
  
“No, he got Sheena.” Kris said. The girl in question huffed once then ducked under the branches to press her face into the bark.  
  
The players once again scattered. This time Rose decided to try something other than a tent. She looked around for a good spot as she ran and spotted a tree with a few sturdy branches low enough for her to grab–but probably not low enough for a child. Well, they’d told her not to go easy on them. Maybe they wouldn’t have said that if they knew how much experience she had at hiding.  
  
She braced one foot against the tree and then reached for the lowest branch and pulled herself up onto it. She rested there for a second to make sure it wasn’t going to break, then she reached for the next one. She climbed up about two meters up where the branches were thicker then settled down on one to wait.  
  
But she wasn’t waiting as long as she thought. Less than a minute later, Sheena was staring up at her from beneath the tree.  
  
“I found you.”  
  
 _How the hell did she do that?_ “Sheena,” she said slowly. “Did you peek?”  
  
She bit her lip. “No…”  
  
Rose raised her eyebrows. She carefully descended from the tree, landing with a light thud. She folded her arms and frowned at Sheena who made no move to tag her. “You sure about that?”  
  
“Um,” the little girl mumbled.  
  
“That’s what I thought.”  
  
“Sorry.”  
  
“Uh huh.” Rose frowned at her for another moment. Then she winked and tore off towards base. Sheena didn’t even bother chasing after her.  
  
Kari came running up a few minutes later, giggling breathlessly, tagged the tree, then sat down next to Rose. She saw Sheena a few yards away slow to a halt then run in another direction in search of someone else.  
  
“Where were you hiding?” Kari asked.  
  
“Not telling,” Rose said. “I might hide there again.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
They were quiet for a few minutes. Rose alternated between tracking Sheena’s progression and glancing down at the little girl next to her. Yesterday when she’d been watching Rose and Martha unpack, she’d been alone in her tent. Last night and this morning, Rose had seen one Native American man in the crowd, but Kari hadn’t been anywhere near him.  
  
“Kari…”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“Where’s your mum ‘n dad?”  
  
“Dead.” No hesitation, no sadness, like it was a simple fact to her.  
  
Rose nodded, expecting as much. It wasn’t uncommon for parents to have shielded or concealed children at the cost of their own life in the initial attack or afterwards. “Who are you with?”  
  
“Kris’s mom takes care of me.” Again, like a simple fact.  
  
A coping mechanism, Rose realized. One she’d seen many times. Pretend it happened to someone else. Maybe not the healthiest way to go but it worked for her then Rose wouldn’t say anything. She didn’t have time to play counselor.  
  
The peaceful air was abruptly shattered by three sharp whistle blasts. Everyone in camp turned towards the sound almost as one. Kari stiffened. The whistle went off again three times from a different direction. Then there was a gunshot. Someone screamed, “INCOMING!” and all hell broke loose.  
  
It wasn’t hard to guess what was happening. But how? _How_?! Was it a random raid or had Moran somehow tracked them again? It was uncanny how this man always seemed to find them even when, by rights, they should have lost him long ago.  
  
Rose grabbed Kari and hoisted her towards the lowest branches of the tree. “Grab on the branches, get out of sight.” Kari did, hauling herself onto the nearest branch. “And no matter what you see or hear, don’t come out of that tree. If it’s who I think it is, they’ll kill you.”  
  
The whistle blasted again, nearer to camp this time, and Rose heard a loud clattering noise from one side. The noise makers on the wire. Oh, God, they were here.  
  
Kari’s breath came in quick, panicked gasps. “What about the others?!”  
  
“I’ll try to get to them. Now climb!” She barked. “Go.”  
  
Kari nodded and reached for the next branch. Rose waited until she was sure the little girl had it then she took off for their tent. A single gunshot ran through the air and someone shouted what sounded like a battle cry before she heard a shotgun go off. The campers were fighting back!  
  
She cast her mind out, searching for Martha’s. She wasn’t in the camp. She must still be out with the gatherers. Good, that meant she was safe for the moment. Ducking into their tent, Rose immediately began grabbing the various belongings they’d taken out and shoved them back into their bags. She grabbed their sleeping bags and rolled them haphazardly, hooking them onto the bags as well.  
  
A scream just outside their tent drew her attention. Rose peered outside and saw a woman whose long blonde hair was in the grasp of a UCF at least twice her size. As the woman struggled, he moved closer to her, grabbing her waist, and Rose just happened to see his face. It wasn’t Moran but she recognized him as one of the men who always traveled with him.  
  
The world around her sharpened into focus, as if she’d been seeing the world from behind opaque glass all along and now she was seeing for the first time. Colors were brighter, more distinct, details she would not otherwise notice became evident. The song of Time filled her mind, a haunting melody weaving through the sounds of chaos in her ears. She could feel time itself hissing and crackling around her–all wrong from the paradox they lived in but still progressing, as it should.  
  
She could feel the potential outcomes looming before her, all of them branching from her decision now. Act or don’t act. Fight or flight? Attack or hide?  
  
She let out a quiet hiss as her policy of keeping out of sight and the fight went to the pot. Not again. She would not sit by again and let people die when she could help them.  
  
She didn’t even remember making the decision to move but she was abruptly aware that she was sprinting towards the man at full tilt. “Get off her!” she shouted. Dimly, she realized voice had taken on that strange dual-toned quality that came on in the direst circumstances. As he turned, she punched him as hard as she could. Pain zinged through her hand but her body began repairing any damage almost immediately. The woman kicked the soldier hard in the groin, wriggled free, and stumbled away.  
  
He doubled over, grasping at himself, and Rose kicked him in the tailbone. He went down hard, gasping, and rolled onto his back. She planted her foot in the center of his chest and pressed down. He gawked up at her.  
  
“You!” he gasped. For a moment, hunter and hunted stared at each other, both equally surprised to be facing each other in such a position. She could see her eyes, gleaming with the power of time, reflected in his. But he recovered quickly and bellowed, “IT’S HER! IT’S ROSE–”  
  
She thought of the dozens of people she’d met that this man had killed, and it was for them, not for her own preservation, that she slammed her foot into his throat, crushing his windpipe. He would die slowly, gasping for air.  
  
She heard a strangled cry just to her right. Her head whipped around and she saw the blonde woman she had rescued, staring at the scene before her in terror. Her eyes flicked from Rose to the dying man and back again. Rose hissed out a breath between her teeth. “Run!” she snarled. “Hide!”  
  
The woman stumbled back, nearly tripping over her own feet in her haste to get away. In the back of Rose’s mind, something whispered that it was _her_ she wanted to get far away from, but she could not bring herself to care as she swung her head around, seeking another. She found one almost immediately with his gun trained on Sandra, who knelt on the ground next to Jasper, who was bleeding from a wound in his shoulder.  
  
Rose snarled and her mind shot forward, slamming into the soldier’s with enough force to completely obliterate any natural protections he had. She reveled in the panic she felt rising up as he realized he was being attacked. She jumped at him, slamming her hands against the sides of her head, using the contact to push deeper into his mind, further than she’d ever dared to go into anyone’s mind before. As she went she ravaged everything she touched–memories, emotions, thoughts–she razed them all to nothing.  
  
By the time he hit the ground, he no longer even knew his own name.  
  
Rose stood there for a moment, panting, then her eyes flicked down to Jasper. She knelt down next to him and pressed her glowing palm against his shoulder. No exit wound on the other side, which meant the bullet went clean through. Good _Conserve your energy_ , the voice in her head whispered. She mended the arteries so he wouldn’t bleed and urged his skin to repair itself quickly before breaking off the contact.  
  
A child’s scream pierced the air over the sound of gunfire and shouting.  
  
Without a word to either of them, she leapt to her feet and went racing towards the source of the screaming. Kris was grappling with a blonde UCF soldier while Brad and Sheena hid in the tent behind him. Blood gushed from Kris’s nose, and the soldier had four parallel gouges in his cheek, like he’d been clawed at. The soldier punched Kris in the temple and the teenager went sprawling to the ground.  
  
Sheena screamed again.  
  
The soldier kicked him in the side and Kris curled in on himself protectively. He moved to kick him again and Rose sprang.  
  
“Get away from him!” She snarled. He only just had time to turn before she was on him. He stumbled back from the force and her extra weight and he hit the ground hard. She rolled off of him and sprang into a protective crouch in front of Kris.  
  
He blinked dazedly for a moment then rolled onto his side to push himself up. He saw her, then, and for a moment he was afraid. She could tell the instant he recognized her. Most of the fear drained away as his face hardened and he pushed himself to his knees, scrambling for the radio on his belt as well as his gun. She considered snapping his neck then and there. But there were at least sixteen more of his people scattered throughout the camp. It would take too long to get them all one by one. By then over half the camp would be dead. She had to make them come to her.  
  
The soldier pointed his gun at her head with one hand and pressed the button on the radio with his other. Keeping his eyes locked on her, he barked into the radio. “Target ‘A’ located. I repeat: Target ‘A’ located. Inner area of the camp, South side. She’s aggressive but unarmed. Target ‘B’ nowhere in sight.”  
  
He let go of the button on his radio as other voices confirmed that they’d received his message and were on the way. He took a deep breath through his nose and lowered his radio.  
  
“Thanks,” she said and uncertainly flickered across his face. “You just made my job a lot easier.”  
  
The gun turned to dust in his hand and in the two seconds he took his eyes off her to gawk at the empty space, she pounced. She grabbed his head tightly between her hands and snapped his neck. She released him and his body flopped to the ground.  
  
“Rose…?”  
  
Rose whirled around.  
  
Kris was propped up on his arms, staring at the body of the soldier behind her. In the tent, Sheena and Brad were watching the scene with wide, horrified eyes. He looked up at her and swallowed.  
  
“Get up,” she ordered. “Quickly. I left Kari in the yew tree. Get them up there with her. I’ll keep them busy.”  
  
“They’ll kill you!” He protested.  
  
Her answering grin was absolutely feral. “They’ll try.”  
  
Rose leaped to her feet and screeched at the top of her lungs, “COME GET ME YOU BASTARDS!” She could see them weaving through the tents towards her… most of the UCFs she’d spotted. She shot off in the opposite direction from Kris and the kids and, predictably, the soldiers followed her.  
  
“HALT!” one of them shouted.  
  
She heard a gun go off and felt the bullet racing through the air towards her. She swerved sharply just a second before it passed through where she’d been a second before. She veered around a tree in her path and found herself face to face with an African American UCF and his gun. She grabbed the muzzle before he had time to react and pushed it down, twisted around, and elbowed him in the nose as hard as she could. He hit the ground like a sack of potatoes.  
  
Another one charged at her. Reaching beneath her shirt, she pulled the knife out of her belt. He came at her and she ducked underneath his arms, bringing her own up and stabbed him in his back. He screamed. She pulled it out then slashed the back of his neck.  
  
It was the most exhilarating thing she’d experienced in a long time. The rush of power and adrenaline through her body, the ease in which she fought, the way they could scarcely land a blow. They were nothing–weak, insignificant, beings who did not deserve even the energy she spent on them. But they threatened her and the woman who had become her sister and had killed so many in their drive to capture her. They had to be stopped.  
  
Rose twisted around, ready for another. But none came. Her clothes were ripped and her knife was still lodged in someone’s throat. Nearly a dozen bodies lay strewn around her, some dead, some dying, some with minds so ravaged that they would never function again.  
  
 _It’s not enough,_ something inside her hissed. _Where is their leader?_  
  
She heard a click of a gun and spun around. There he stood, the man who had been pursuing them for so long. His hair was shorter than she remembered, but his moustache remained, and his heavily lined face was taught with anger. He had a crying brunette teenager–Stevie–in a headlock with the muzzle of a pistol pointed right at her head.  
  
“Let her go,” Rose growled.  
  
“Why? So you can kill me? No way,” Moran replied.  
  
“STEVIE!” Someone shrieked.  
  
“Ah, ah, ah!” Moran cautioned. He gave Stevie a shake. “She’s a pretty thing. It’d be a shame if I had to blast her head open.”  
  
Stevie whimpered.  
  
Rose’s breath slid between her teeth in a hiss. She didn’t have it in her to destroy his gun from this far away and if she tried to get any closer he was sure to pull the trigger. He’d slaughtered children younger than Stevie before.  
  
She glanced around. It seemed as if the entire camp had witnessed what she’d done. They were all watching from afar or peeking out of their hiding places. Behind her, a woman sobbed.  
  
“Give it up, Moran,” she spat. “You’re outnumbered. You pull the trigger and we’ll be all over you.”  
  
“Ah, but she’ll still be dead,” he pointed out. “Do you really think we came alone? The moment Jacob said he’d found you I radioed in backup. There are at least fifty more soldiers en route for this little campsite. And when they get here, you’ll all be dead.”  
  
The sounds of the survivor’s distress filled the air and Moran smirked. Rose’s breathing was beginning to slow, the buzz of power fading from her veins. The song in her head was quieting. She was running out of time.  
  
“Unless,” he said loudly, “of course, you surrendered. You and your friend Martha. I know she’s around here somewhere.”  
  
Rose swayed slightly as the exhaustion began to creep in.  
  
“Martha Jo-o-ones,” he called in a loud sing-song. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”  
  
Her legs gave out. With a sigh, she fell onto her hands and knees. Her arms nearly buckled beneath her but by some miracle, she managed to keep herself up. A few people cried out in alarm. The song continued faintly in her mind but the fire had gone.  
  
“Oh, wow. You don’t look so good, Tyler.”  
  
Rose raised her head to look at him. Then she noticed the bodies around her. Men with their necks twisted awkwardly, their throats slashed, their heads dented, and a few that looked unharmed but their faces were completely and utterly blank. One man’s face and eyes were gone entirely and she could see his skeleton surrounded by the flesh that she hadn’t dissolved away. Her stomach did somersaults and she had to look away.  
  
Oh, _God_ , what had she _done_?  
  
“…You know, it’s a shame the Master wants you alive,” Moran said morosely, drawing her attention back to him. “You’ve been quite a pain in my ass, Rose Tyler.”  
  
“Good,” she spat. The rage from before was coming back.  
  
“When I was assigned to capture you, I expected it to be a quick job. A week max. We were taught how to see through your little perception filters. We even have this nifty little gadget that let us hone in on your biosignature. But you just kept slipping past us.”  
  
Rose ducked her head and stared at the ground. So that was how they’d done it. Rose was unique in the whole world. She didn’t know much about biosignatures, but she knew finding hers would be like finding a piece of gold amongst silver. He really had been tracking her all along. No wonder they had always seemed to catch up with them when by rights they should’ve lost him.  
  
She shook her head. Bad idea. Dizziness washed through her and she very nearly fell over. She was so tired and it was probably only the adrenaline still keeping her conscious.  
  
“So what’s it gonna be, Rose? Are you going to surrender yourself and Miss Jones to me? Or are you going to let everyone here die like all those other times?”  
  
“I vote neither.”  
  
 _Martha!_ Rose’s head snapped up.  
  
She was standing just behind Moran with a long filleting knife pressed against his throat. Rose smiled.  
  
Moran glanced at her. “There you are, Jones. I was wondering when you’d turn up.”  
  
“Let her go, Moran.”  
  
“Cut my throat if you want. There’s still a small army heading this way. You’ll all still die.”  
  
Martha tightened her grip on the handle.  
  
“Besides, I don’t think you have it in you,” he went on. “Way I hear it, Rose is the fighter, the healer, the Torchwood agent. And some guy’s piece of tail. What are you?”  
  
“More than you know,” Martha growled.  
  
“Does Rose even _need_ you? What’s your role in this team? Some sort of assistant? Side-kick? Why does Our Master even care about you?”  
  
“Shut up!”  
  
Moran laughed loudly. He threw himself backwards, knocking into Martha. Rose watched in horror as the knife slipped from her fingers. His grip on Stevie must’ve loosened because she was suddenly struggling against him furiously. She got her head down enough that she was able to sink her teeth into his arm. He howled in pain and she elbowed him in the stomach before wriggling free and racing away.  
  
He stood there, rubbing his arm with a furious expression on his face. Then he rounded on Martha who was propped up on her bum on the ground, rubbing her chest. She saw him turn and started scrambling backwards madly.  
  
“I think Our Master will forgive me if I only brought back Rose Tyler alive,” he said as he raised the gun.  
  
A shotgun went off somewhere nearby and Rose saw Moran stumble back from the impact. On the other side of a tent directly across from Rose, one of the men was lowering his shotgun with a satisfied smirk on his face. Rose exhaled in relief and finally let herself sink fully to the ground.  
  
Martha scrambled to her feet and raced towards Rose, careful to avoid Moran’s body. He wasn’t dead yet. She dropped to Rose’s side and lifted her chest off the ground with her arm. “You’re alright, I’ve got you.”  
  
“You took your time,” Rose grunted.  
  
Martha looked around at the bodies and Rose felt tears welling in her eyes. “Rose, did you…?”  
  
Rose nodded and burst into tears. “I c-couldn’t… I couldn’t sit by again. Not again. I couldn’t let them. I just couldn’t.”  
  
“It’s okay,” Martha assured her quietly. “I promise you, it’s okay. You saved them, Rose. You saved _us_. Now they can’t follow us anymore.”  
  
Rose couldn’t even catch her breath to tell Martha that she was wrong. They could find them again. As long as Rose existed as she was, they would always be able to find them. Oh, but she was so tired. She’d done more in the last few minutes than she ever had. If she didn’t allow herself to rest very soon she might not recover. Even though there were more soldiers coming, she didn’t have the strength left in her to stand, never mind run. She raised her head to tell Martha this when she saw movement just beyond her friend’s shoulder.  
  
Moran was bleeding out on the ground–he only had minutes left at most–but he still had the strength in him to raise his gun and point it at them.  
  
“NO!” she cried, shoving against Martha just as the shot rang out.  
  
Fiery hot pain seared in her side, just below her ribcage. People started screaming and she heard two more gunshots go off but she felt no more pain so she could only assume he either missed or someone else had shot him.  
  
“ROSE!” Martha shrieked. Rose felt herself being rolled over and the pain in her side spiked. She cried out and a fresh wave of tears dripped from her eyes. Martha pressed her hands against Rose’s side and she cried in pain again. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she sucked in quick shallow breaths.  
  
Martha’s voice was garbled and it took her a few seconds to make sense of her friend’s words. “Are you healing yourself? Rose, answer me, are you healing yourself?”  
  
There was no tingling around the wound, no soothing warmth. She shook her head.  
  
“No. No, no. You’ve got to.”  
  
She tried. She reached for the power within her but she could not find it. She’d used it all up. “I can’t.”  
  
Martha stared at her and for a moment it was if Rose could hear her thinking even though she hadn’t initiated any link. Compression on the wound was only a temporary solution. She needed a hospital or she would die.  
  
A tiny laugh bubbled past her lips. “I thought that I’d die on some alien planet far away. Saving the world. Or maybe old, in my bed, with the Doctor right there….”  
  
“You’re not gonna die,” Martha said. Tears streamed from her eyes. “You’re not.”  
  
Rose wondered who she was trying to convince. She reached her hand over and slid it around one of Martha’s, holding it as tightly as she could. “Martha,” she whispered. Martha stared at her for a second and then lifted the hand Rose was holding away from the wound and squeezed it as tightly as she could. “You can do it. You can save the world.”  
  
“I can’t. Not on my own.”  
  
“You _can_ ,” she insisted. “And you have to. Or else it was all for nothing. …I believe in you.”  
  
Martha took a deep breath and nodded.  
  
It was getting harder to breathe, harder to keep her eyes on Martha. Darkness was creeping around her vision. She was so tired.  
  
But she didn’t want to die. Not without seeing the Doctor one last time. She wanted his face to be the last thing she saw, his arms to be the last thing she felt. She closed her eyes and imagined him sitting next to her. He would–he would be crying. Begging her not to go, not to leave him, because she’d promised him forever. She’d _promised_. No… No. As much as she wanted him here, it was good that he wasn’t. She didn’t want one of his last memories of her to be her broken, bleeding body.  
  
She opened her eyes again and looked into Martha’s. “Take care of him,” she breathed.  
  
“I will,” Martha promised.  
  
Rose thought she smiled but she wasn’t sure. She couldn’t feel her face anymore. She couldn’t feel anything, actually, except a familiar, soothing warmth. She closed her eyes, sinking into it. “And tell him…I love…”


	67. Lament

  
  
He had always loved this planet. Its people may not have been the best, and he’d be lying if he said he enjoyed their company–with a few exceptions; Romana was always the highlight of his time here. But the planet itself was gorgeous. He’d been all over the universe, seen the most breathtaking sights, but nothing could quite compare to the beauty of his home world. The burnt orange skies, the brown water, the mighty peaks and rolling hills, the silver trees, the beautiful red grass, even the flat barren expanses were stunning to behold.  
  
He lay on his back in the soft grass, watching the clouds drift by overhead. The twin suns warmed his body and the fresh wild air filled his nostrils with each breath. He could stay like this all day, basking in this beautiful Gallifreyan day.   
  
He closed his eyes as he inhaled deeply, and when he opened them it was nighttime. They sky was filled with stars. All three of the moons were full and high in the sky together, something he hadn’t seen since his youth.   
  
A quiet noise, almost like a whine, caught his attention. He craned his neck and saw that a slender she-wolf was sitting a few feet away, head cocked to the side. At first he thought her fur was white but then he realized it was actually a light golden color and her eyes were deep gold. Her entire body shone with light that seemed to dance around her, rippling and swaying through the air, swirling with patterns and twinkling like the stars above them.  
  
The breath rushed from his chest and his body moved of its own accord, sitting up so he could see her properly. The species known as ‘wolves’ to human beings did not exist on Gallifrey, and the one species that resembled them had died out long ago. Yet there she sat.  
  
 _Lord of Time_ , a feminine voice whispered in his mind. His eyes widened in surprise. He was the only being for miles, how on Gallifrey was someone speaking that clearly in his mind? Unless… He glanced at the wolf.  
  
The she-wolf stood, and he saw her legs shake from the effort, but she smiled at him. A real smile, lips curled up in a way that was not at all threatening. _I found you._  
  
She took a step forward and her legs gave out beneath her. He was on his feet before she even hit the ground, racing to her side.   
  
She was even more beautiful up close, practically exuding warmth. He reached out to touch her, help her somehow, before considering that it might not be a good idea. Beautiful she may be, but she was powerful and wild. He could sense it. And she was obviously injured and, therefore, even more dangerous. Yet he wasn’t afraid. She blinked at him, lifting her head, and let out a long whine.  
  
Slowly, carefully, he touched his hand to the side of her neck. Her fur was like warm silk and he couldn’t resist running his fingers through it. She rumbled in quiet approval and he felt it reverberate against his hand. Ducking her head, she rested it against the ground again. His other hand joined the first, stroking up and down her flank and back gently, letting the soft fur slide through his fingers.   
  
The wolf blinked at him, and then turned her head to look at the silver forest in the distance. _I want to go there. I want to run._ Why did she sound familiar?   
  
_Then you should_ , he replied.  
  
Why did he have the fierce urge to join her? He’d enjoyed the running for quite some time now but there was something about her. He was _supposed_ to run with her like they had many times before. Yet he couldn’t recall ever meeting her before now. He’d met lupine species before, but not her. Never her. He’d remember.  
  
 _But I ran for so long_ , she whined mournfully. _I can’t anymore. I have to rest._  
  
Her flank was cooling beneath his touch, her eyes beginning to droop, the light around her dimming.  
  
 _Will you stay with me? Just until I fall asleep?_  
  
 _Of course_ , he thought in reply. Her tail flicked up and down feebly and he knew she’d heard him. _I’ll stay as long as you want me._  
  
He shifted his legs so they were lying straight out in front of him and patted his lap with a hand. She watched him, and then shifted over to him and rested her head in his lap. He hesitated for a second, and then gently began to pat her head. She made that rumbling sound again and her tail flicked up and down once more.  
  
 _Thank you_ , she whispered as her eyes slipped shut.  
  
She was so cold.   
  


~*~

  
  
The Doctor slowly drifted into consciousness but didn’t open his eyes. He hadn’t felt this well-rested in months. There hadn’t been any nightmares at all. For a moment, he basked in the contentment leftover from his dream. His…dream… The golden wolf and a voice that had been oh-so-familiar at the time, but now he couldn’t recall. His internal clock was tetchy because of the paradox, but he still was able to tell he’d slept five and a half hours. Good enough for him.   
  
He allowed his eyes to gradually open and found himself staring at a smooth wooden wall. Right. He was in his cell today.  
  
Jack’s cell privileges had been revoked again. He was tied up somewhere down below where the Master wouldn’t have to deal with the Captain’s _wrongness_ unless he decided to kill him for fun. Sooner or later, Jack would be put back in his cell and sooner or later he’d lose his rights to it again. The Jones family was crammed into a single cell together which was good. He worried for Tish and Francine if left on their own. The Master was bad enough but he had his wife. Some of the soldiers onboard the _Valiant_ hadn’t been given leave in a while, and there was every chance they might suddenly decide they had a right to one of the women. Clive acted as a barrier between them and the unsavory characters…for the most part. Jack helped when he could. Those altercations were usually what led to him being revoked cell rights.  
  
But, all in all, their living situations were stable.  
  
The Doctor, however, was relocated on the whims of the Master. Sometimes he was locked in this cell or one just like it. Sometimes he was locked in cupboards. Sometimes he was tied up across the room from the TARDIS, close enough that he was unable to completely block her screams, but too far to help her. Occasionally they’d roll him into a shower room and toss him a bar of soap and not let him out for hours. Sometimes he was simply left in the control room in that blasted wheelchair he was so dependent on these days. There were other places he’d been put in, too–like that time a few months ago when he’d been given a room in the living quarters with decent accommodations and a bed almost as comfortable as the one he shared with Rose. But then later that night he’d discovered his room was right next to the Saxons’ and he’d had to listen to them on and off all night. He never quite worked out the Master’s intentions with that one.   
  
But it had made him think of Rose.  
  
 _Oh, Rose…_ He closed his eyes again and pictured her as she had been the last time they had woken up together in her room in the Torchwood Hub... The loving, serene smile on her face as she demonstrated her telepathic abilities by clumsily nudging his mind... It had been the first innocent, gentle telepathic contact he’d felt since before the War. He recalled the pure love and trust he’d felt when his mind had delved into hers... The shyness as she offered to form a bond with him, out of love and compassion for him... The way she looked with her head on her pillows, golden hair fanning out around her.   
  
Then he recalled how she had looked in the last moment he’d seen her. Her kiss. Her whispering, “I love you.” Tear-streaked cheeks, the heartbroken look on her face, the determination in her eyes as she covered Martha’s hand with her own and activated the manipulator.   
  
She was the reason he fought. She had been for so long now. Everyday before he began meditating and honing in on the Archangel Network, he thought of seeing her again when it was all over. He had faith in her–in both of them. He knew they would succeed.   
  
Logan, one of the kinder guards onboard the _Valiant_ , showed up half an hour after he’d awoken. He was one of the older soldiers, right around 56 if the Doctor had to guess. His acts of kindness were subtle to avoid tipping off the Master but the Doctor knew a friend when he saw one. He helped rather than forced the Doctor into his chair. His food portions were always larger when Logan delivered them. Little things like that.  
  
Logan gave him his breakfast–some sort of fruit dish, the Doctor didn’t really care to identify what he was eating–then rolled the wheelchair into the cell. “Our Master has requested your presence in the control room.”  
  
The Doctor raised one eyebrow as he stood. “Requested?”   
  
Logan placed a steadying hand on the Doctor’s arm as he eased himself down into the seat. “I believe the word could be interchanged with ‘demanded’ if you’d like.”   
  
The Doctor didn’t respond. He didn’t speak much these days, not even to Jack or the Joneses unless he needed to. Definitely not to the Master. He had nothing to say to him that the other Time Lord wanted to hear. He opted to spend most of his days lost in thought or focusing on the Archangel Network. He was a little over halfway finished.   
  
Logan rolled him through the halls and up to the control room. The Doctor knew the moment they entered that this was not going to be a typical visit. Francine, Tish, and Clive were all present and seated on one side of the large table in the center of the room. Jack was seated on the other side, with his hands bound in a pair of sturdy cuffs. An overhead screen and projector–already running–had been set up at the end of the table. The Master was not present.  
  
Logan rolled the Doctor into the empty space right next to him. He held back a sigh. These last few months had helped him grow accustomed to being near Jack but it still wasn’t always easy. This looked to be one of those days.   
  
“Doctor,” Jack greeted quietly. Francine and Clive echoed him.  
  
The Doctor inclined his head.  
  
One of the doors opened and the Master bounded in with a gleeful smile on his face and a laptop under one arm. Lucy trailed behind him in a full-length black dress that made her look pasty, and the dark circles under her eyes all the more prominent. She looked greatly troubled and when her eyes met the Doctor’s, he saw sorrow and–dare he say it?–remorse there.   
  
“Good morning everyone!” The Master greeted. “Did you sleep well? I didn’t sleep a wink! Do you know why?” he asked. He set the laptop down on the table, but didn’t even bother waiting for them to answer. “I received the most exciting news last night. Or, actually, more of a confirmation of some news I received a few days ago. I considered sharing then…but I decided to get all the facts first. No need to get worked up over nothing!”  
  
As he spoke, he opened the laptop and typed in a long password, then connected it to the projector with a thick blue cord. “It’s, really, rather good news. Right, Lucy?”  
  
“Good news,” she echoed softly.   
  
“Martha Jones,” the Master said, earning the undivided attention of her family members, “is dreadfully normal. Plain old human. Rose Tyler, however, isn’t. And, oh, Doctor, she is something.” He grinned. “Really. Some of the stories that have gotten back to me about them. They say she can heal people just by touching them. Now how does that work?”  
  
The Doctor said nothing.   
  
“Oh, come on.” The Master pouted. “Not even a hint? A little tiny hint? No?” He sighed. “Fine. Be like that. Did you know that whenever she does it, it affects her biosignature? To the point where it’s traceable.”   
  
The Doctor curled his hands into fists. _Oh, Rose. You’ve been healing people left and right, haven’t you?_ Of course she had. She’s Rose. Even if she knew it made her traceable, he knew she’d still do it.   
  
“I’ve had a team following her signal for months. They always arrived too late, it seemed. Slippery, those two. A few weeks ago, however, the team reported they had tracked them to a camp along the coast of Oregon. Then, nothing. No radio contact, no phone calls. Curious, isn’t it?” He looked at all of them mildly. “Now, at the same time, I’ve been getting reports of rumors and whispers from the people below. Martha Jones has been traveling along the Californian coast…and all accounts say the same thing: she’s alone.”  
  
Rose must’ve found out she was being traced and separated from Martha. Or perhaps they split for another reason. Possibly to cover more ground. Maybe Rose remained behind for some reason. They had their mission, how they carried it out was up to them.   
  
“Two days ago, a worker from a labor camp Martha stopped in reported something very, very interesting. I’ve got a recording of it, would you like to hear?” He didn’t wait for their answer either way, striking a key on his computer with relish. An American voice raspy from overuse or disuse filtered through the filtered through the speakers.   
  
_“We’d heard the stories, you know. Two women traveling all over to find a way to kill the Master. Rose Tyler and Martha Jones.”_ The Doctor heard the intakes of breath from the other side of the table and out of the corner of his eye he saw Francine sit up straighter, Clive clench his fists, and Tish cover her mouth with her hand. _“Didn’t really believe it until…she was there. Martha Jones, real as you and me, in our barracks. She told us about…things. Things and…things.”  
  
“What kind of things?” _ a smooth female voice inquired.   
  
_“Silly things. But we all knew the stories and we knew there was supposed to be two of ‘em. So they asked. She said Rose killed an entire squadron of Enforcers to save the people at this camp. But then this one guy at the end, he tried to shoot her–Martha, I mean–but Rose pushed her out of the way. Took the hit instead. She died.”_  
  
The air rushed out of the Doctor’s body. His hearts stopped beating. A strange buzzing sound filled his ears. He became aware of how empty his mind was. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. _No no no please no not her no no no not her no no no please not her too._  
  
Over the buzzing in his ears, he could hear the Master’s pleased voice. “So, naturally, I had to know if this was true. I sent a few Toclafane to sweep the area of their last transmission and they found the remains of a campsite. They reported some interesting things so a squadron of soldiers were sent out to have a better look. They took some photographs–would you like to see? I think you should.”  
  
This drew the Doctor out of his daze. “You’re going to like this,” the Master told them as the projector flickered on.  
  
An image of a forest clearing–definitely Oregon or somewhere around there, all the trees and plants were indigenous to that area–filled the screen. In it there were the remains of four large pyres that he could tell from the remains burned a number of bodies each. Some of the skeletons remained mostly intact.   
  
“You’re looking at what remains of the team sent after Rose and Martha.” The Master clucked softly. “They found a few dog tags in the ashes to confirm. And,” he laughed quietly, “let me tell you, some of them had some pretty gruesome deaths.”   
  
The picture changed to one of a charred skeleton with its neck noticeably crushed. Jack whistled softly.   
  
“Every, single one of the tracking squad and their backup,” the Master informed them. “Dead. Killed. Just like the fellow said. Though, it would seem Rose wasn’t entirely successful.” The next picture showed a row of graves, each marked with a large stone or wooden cross that had a name carved into it. He showed them a few more angles of the same five graves. In the last picture, however, the Doctor noticed a possible sixth grave marker at the edge of the picture, away from the others.  
  
The Master looked right at the Doctor and with a smile as dark as his hearts, he pressed the button to change the picture once more.  
  
It was a stone the size of a football and it had the name _Rose Marion Tyler_ carved into the smooth stone.   
  
“You fucking bastard!” Jack spat. “What the hell is that?”   
  
The Master cocked his head to one side and leaned one arm on the table. “Isn’t it obvious? It’s a grave.”  
  
“And you expect us to believe that?! Anyone can take a rock and carve a name into it. Doesn’t make it real.”  
  
“You know–” he pointed at him “–I thought so too. So, naturally, I had them dig it up.”  
  
The Doctor growled at him and he so badly wanted to fling himself at the Master and break every bone in his body. How _dare_ he?  
  
“There was no body.” The Master said seriously. “They found a burial shroud with nothing inside it. Except–” He dug around in his pocket “–for this.”  
  
He pulled out a thin silver chain and the Doctor’s hearts clenched at the sight. _Please no._ “Have a look, Dumbledore.” He said, tossing it to him.  
  
Even in this state, the Doctor’s hand still shot up and caught the chain reflexively. He twined it through his fingers, recognizing the familiar texture and shape, the unique silver sheen. Of course he recognized it. His people had called it _Plyra Seut_ , a substance that was almost entirely indestructible, usually fashioned into various types of locks or jewelry. He’d chosen that material in the form of a necklace to give to Rose as a gift so she would always be able to keep her TARDIS key (and anything else she wanted to put on there) safe. No one could remove it but Rose and she would never leave it behind.  
  
He felt Jack’s hand on his shoulder. “Doc, is that–?”  
  
His hands began shaking and his vision blurred as tears filled his eyes. He blinked them away furiously but he couldn’t stop the heavy sob from wrenching its way free. He heard Jack let out a roar of fury and his chair was jostled as the Captain lunged around him, presumably towards the Master. He didn’t care.  
  
If the man from the tape’s word was to be believed, then she had died fighting. Saving people–protecting Martha. A tiny part of him was proud of her, his brave, selfless human. Of course she would’ve pushed Martha out of the way. Maybe she thought she could save herself with her own abilities. Maybe she hadn’t cared either way. Had she suffered? His stomach clenched at the thought and his mind denied it while at the same time knowing it to be true. A bullet wound was painful no matter what. And unless someone had been merciful, it was likely she had simply bled out or suffered from a vital organ failure. Neither of which would have been quick and painless.  
  
Worse still–she was gone. The only way that necklace could’ve been inside the shroud was if she, too, had once been. Perhaps later he might be rational and figure out how it was possible for her body to simply be gone, but for the moment, all he could think was that _she_ was.  
  
The Doctor sobbed again. _Rose, precious girl, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry._   
  
Jack screamed as he was killed and the Doctor was granted a momentary reprieve from the perpetual discomfort he triggered, allowing him to think clearly. All wasn’t lost. There was still hope. Martha was still out there, still traveling. They were living in a paradox and if the source of its stability was broken, time would erase these events. Everything that happened would be undone.   
  
The Doctor looked down at Rose’s necklace again, now the only thing he had of her. The Master would probably try to take it from him. That wasn’t happening. He wrapped it around his fingers, thumb, and wrist, twisting and looping, until he couldn’t wrap it any more. They would cut his hand off before he let anyone take it from him.  
  


~*~

  
  
  
Left…left…left, right, left.   
  
Left…left…left, right, left.  
  
It was dull and monotonous but there was nothing else to think about. Everything else eventually led back to what she’d lost. She had to keep walking, had to keep going. Left, right, left, right, left, right, over and over, endlessly moving towards a goal that had never seemed further away.   
  
She was gone. Her best friend, her sister, her partner, her fellow fugitive. It wasn’t getting any easier as time wore on. Sometimes she liked to pretend Rose’s perception filter was keeping her hidden from Martha as well and that she really was right behind her. It might not have been healthy but it worked and that was all Martha cared about.  
  
Martha especially had to be careful when she was traveling. Rose’s senses had been somewhat heightened by whatever was inside her head, and she’d always been able to provide advanced warning if anything was approaching them. Like Toclafane. Plus if she hurt herself now, she was completely on her own, no healer to get her back on her feet. If she wasn’t a med student, she probably would’ve been screwed.   
  
But there was one wound she couldn’t do anything about. She _missed_ Rose so much that it hurt. For well over a year, she had seen Rose almost every single day. The last six months had been spent almost entirely in her company. It was like she’d lost a vital limb and without it she was flailing. Everywhere she went the wound was torn right back open and had salt poured in. A majority of America’s Pacific Coast knew their legend by the time she reached them. Each time she was asked where Rose was and each time she had to tell them Rose was dead. Then she had to tell them why and how so they wouldn’t be discouraged.   
  
_“Rose fought to defend a group of people just like you and in the end she died to save me from a man who refused to die without taking one of us with him.”_  
  
She had to try not to break down in front of them, either. Tears were to be expected but if she really let go like she wanted to, if she screamed and cried and threw things, they’d be afraid. They might not trust she was capable of doing this on her own. _I don’t think I can_ , she’d tell them if she could.   
  
Rose was dead and for all she knew, the Doctor still believed her to be living. What would he say when he realized Rose wasn’t with her when they were reunited? She was sure her imagination wouldn’t be able to conjure the expression on his face when he realized his entire world had been taken from him. (Again.)  
  
She wondered if her family were still alive on the _Valiant_ or if the Master had killed them, too. She didn’t even know where Leo was. He could be in a survivor group of his own or in a slave camp. Or he could be dead. She’d resigned herself to the fact that she might never know what his fate had been. Even if he was alive when this was all over he might not be able to locate them. He might not even know to look.   
  
At least the Doctor would know what became of Rose.  
  
Sometimes at night when she was forced to sleep on her own outside, she thought she could feel someone watching her. Which was entirely impossible, of course, because between the cloak of darkness and her perception filter, she was completely invisible. Maybe it was Rose’s _spirit_ watching over her or something. At least that’s what she told herself. Or maybe she was just being paranoid and no one was watching her at all.   
  
Martha found the UNIT base in San Diego on her own. She made contact with the remaining members of UNIT and told them of Adrienne Kramer’s decoy plan. They’d known Kramer, respected her, and were quite willing to assist. It took a few days but then they presented her with a sleek black case containing a gun with slots for four vials to be inserted. They gave her four vials, one of them already filled with a clear blue liquid. Water with a bit of dye in it, they said. The other three she’d have to fill and dye herself when the time came.   
  
She sailed the Pacific Ocean on her own. Well, not on her own. She was on transport ship and three of the crewmembers knew she was onboard, but she may as well have been alone. The last time she’d crossed the ocean she’d had Rose to keep her sane during the hours trapped below decks and scare off the rats with one look.   
  
They were supposed to be in this together, watching each other’s backs, saving the world as a team. Rose wasn’t supposed to leave her halfway through. She wasn’t supposed to _die._


	68. Wolf's Plight

  
That, Rose decided, might have been one of the strangest dreams she’d ever had. She’d been running across a planet with a burnt orange sky. Some of the continents were hilly, some flat, some were barren while others were covered in red grass. She could see forests in the distance with trees that were silver. The water was brown beneath her as she'd sailed across the waters. She’d been seeking someone. It felt like an eternity before she’d found him. She’d wanted to run with him and explore those beautiful silver forests but she’d been so tired. He'd stayed with her until she fell asleep.  
  
Next thing she knew, she was lying on her back, staring up at a canopy of trees. Regular old green and brown Earth trees. Bright sunlight trickled through the leaves. She took a deep breath and let it out. Then she was on her feet. Looking around, she realized she was in some sort of forest. A campsite, judging from the flattened, grassless ground. But how had she gotten here?  
  
She noticed something out of the corner of her eye and turned. A row of five small dirt mounds, each marked by either a large stone or a wooden cross. Graves, she realized. There was another one. She could see it just out of the corner of her eye. She turned again, expecting to see another row of graves, but there was only one, marked with a large stone that had a name etched into it.  
  
Wait. That was _her_ name.  
  
Pain suddenly flared in her head and Rose gasped, her hands flying to it, as the memories came back.  
  
She and Martha had been tracked here by Moran and his group and they’d attacked the camp. She’d snapped and had retaliated, killing all of them, except Moran. She’d been too weak to fight him by then. Someone else had shot him down just before he could shoot Martha. But he’d still tried to shoot her anyway, but she’d had pushed Martha out of the way and taken the bullet herself. Martha had sat with her as she’d…  
  
As she’d…  
  
Had she died?  
  
Rose shook her head vehemently. No! She couldn’t be dead! She was here, she could see, and hear and feel the sunlight on her skin– She froze. No, she couldn’t. She couldn’t feel the sunlight. She could see it but there was no warmth. She could hear the birds chirping. She was breathing but no scent came with it. The wind blew but it did not touch her. Her hair didn’t ruffle and her skin did not feel any cooler. She raised her hand to her chest, feeling for her heart, but she did not feel the familiar fluttering against her skin.  
  
Slowly, Rose looked down at herself. She was wearing the same outfit from before, though it looked like she’d been through a battle, and the right side of her torso was completely covered in blood. Too much blood. Her feet were perched on top of a mound of dirt that she could not feel.  
  
Rose reached down to touch the stone with her name but her hand simply passed through. She flew away from it. Literally, flew. Her feet weren’t even touching the ground, it had only appeared they were from that angle. She didn’t realize until she was staring at bark that she’d sailed clean through a tree.  
  
 _Oh God oh God oh God oh God oh God._  
  
She lunged forward and passed harmlessly through the tree again. She grabbed for another, and another, zipping back to her grave to kick at the stone. She went through them all. She rammed her feet into the ground but the dirt remained undisturbed. She sobbed but there were no tears. You couldn’t have tears without a body.  
  
Clutching at her head, Rose let out a piercing shriek of anger, frustration, and fear. Her cry went unheard by those on the physical plane, but the sheer amount of emotion went rippling out from her in all directions, striking terror into every living thing for miles. Birds took to the air, deer ran screaming for their lives, and critters scurried underground as fast as they could.  
  
A group of Toclafane nearby perked up in surprise, their sensors registering an extreme telepathic out lash and instead of fleeing, zoomed towards the source.  
  
Rose sobbed, shaking her head. _No no no no no please no I don’t want to be dead I don’t want to be dead I still have so much I want to do and the Doctor–oh God, the Doctor. No no no no he can’t be on his own, he needs me, I have to find him. I don’t want to be dead!_  
  
 _Calm down!_ A voice ordered in her mind. She freaked.  
  
 _Who are you?! How did you get inside my head?! Out out get out!  
  
I cannot. We are joined. _  
  
They were. She could feel another mind, strong and powerful, though muted, woven inextricably with hers. Not for long. She reached towards their bond only to crash into mental walls thicker and sturdier than she’d ever encountered. But she didn’t care. She slammed into them, clawing and tearing.  
  
 _NO!_ The voice cried, panicked. _YOU MUST NOT!_  
  
Really, she should have listened. But she was too panicked to consider the connotations behind the voice’s presence, or the consequences of attempting to remove the barrier between them.  
  
The barrier crumbled without warning and she was hit with a torrent of power and knowledge. Her mind screamed in protest as it struggled to comprehend everything it was suddenly seeing. Countless faces and species and the knowledge of them and she could hear the silent screaming of time as it was contorted and she could see time the past the present the future what is what was what could be what should be and what should not what is and what was not but should be. It swarmed over her, enveloped her, burning and razing and overwhelming. A voice cried out over the cacophony and a gold light latched onto her, shoving against the onslaught, dragging her down  
  


and

she

fell

~*~

  
  
Their minds went under. One Half was sent into a sedative state for safety while the other Half focused its attention on repairing the wall between. What was left was an entity of instinct and power, tethered to this world and this time by one half of Herself and freed from physical restraints by the death of Her other. Formless. Bound by nothing but Her own nature.  
  
She sniffed at Time and breathed in the reek of the massive paradox. If She had hackles they would have risen. This was not meant to be. This could not be. There was something that remained in Her mind: a mission given to her prior to death. She was tasked with bringing about the end of the paradox. It took her a single second to locate the source of the paradox, another to determine the stabilizer, and another to realize She could not interfere with it. Doing so would result in self-termination.  
  
On the physical plane, four objects were fast approaching: anomalies in time that existed only because the stabilizer allowed it. They belonged at the _end_ of time. The Remnants of a species directly descended from humans, close enough biologically that they might be considered the same. The Remnants, however, had lost almost everything they were once, and had become atrocities who found joy in terminating the lives of their ancestors.  
  
The knowledge stirred a different anger with in Her than the one She felt towards their pollution of Time. It was righteous and originated from the human Half.  
  
When the Remnants appeared before her She hissed. The sound seemed to reach them as they swiveled about midair, searching. They beckoned to her with the voices of children but their words meant nothing to her.  
  
She moved, enveloping the nearest one, and with a shriek it exploded into golden dust, which dulled as it fell to the ground. She enveloped the other three in succession and they, too, turned to dust. She felt something akin to pleasure in their demise but mostly satisfaction. The Laws of Time were firm and absolute. Those who defied them must face justice and She would be its deliverer.  
  
There were no more Remnants nearby. She could sense billions more of them around the planet and its surrounding space–but She did not have the ability to destroy them as one and their numbers were too great for Her to eliminate on Her own.  
  
But there were other Time traces in this place left behind by those who had travelled in Time. One was Her own. The other was not. She would follow. With that thought, the forest dissolved into shapeless color and reformed an instant later into a cloudy beach with dull sand and gray waves. The source of the trace was beneath her: a human woman with dark skin who was staring out into the waves. The woman was…sad. She could see it in her face, feel it from her mind. Her grief was measurable and would pass in time and she lived. That was all She cared about.  
  
She saw no reason to communicate with her, so the woman never even knew She’d been there. Yet something urged Her to remain for a time. So She did. But when the woman decided to move on She did not go with her.  
  
There was someone She needed to find. He was important to _both_ Her Halves. A Lord of Time. Her…mate. The world swirled into color once more and reformed on a barren moor. She let out a shriek that rippled through the telepathic plane as She realized how close She was to the source of the paradox and its stabilizer and she vanished before either would realize how close She had been.  
  
She would return periodically to find Her mate but She could never find him the way She could fid the dark woman. Usually She ended up in an unpopulated area. Once She was above the ocean. She would not linger long, only long enough to look, but he was never there. Then She decided to look up and She saw the ship in the sky. Every time after, She looked up and it was there. That was where he was.  
  
When She was not seeking the Doctor, She roamed the planet aimlessly and hunted the Remnants who swarmed through the world. On many occasions She destroyed them as they approached human survivors, saving them before they knew they were even in danger. Other times they simply happened to be near her. Though there were others, humans who had allied themselves with the Remnants and betrayed their own kind. They had not violated any Laws of Time but they had been responsible for Her human Half’s death. They, too, were struck down when it suited Her.  
  
Knowing Her mate’s location was not enough. She needed to see him, needed to know he was alive and well. She began focusing Her attention on the artificial telepathic field that stretched across the entire planet. Something told Her that She could find him through it. And find him She did. But something told Her She shouldn’t attempt contact. That he would be hurt by it.  
  
She waited until he was asleep before slipping into his mind. His dreams were filled with torment. A war throughout Time, vicious screaming, a planet burning, and a woman with golden hair (Her?) smiling at him before perishing in the flames herself. She comforted him, pressing her mind around his soothingly until the nightmares diminished and it was simply the two of them basking in the peace of rest.  
  
There wasn’t really an exact moment when she became fully aware of herself again and not just an instinctive being. But she knew she was not as she was before, when Rose alone was in control. There was another who had just as much say. Rose knew without asking that the other was the TARDIS–rather, the piece of the TARDIS that had been within her mind.  
  


~*~

  
  
At first, Rose protested strongly. She did not want to be trapped a metaphysical being caught in a state between life and death. But Tardis was able to soothe her and explain why they were this way. The paradox machine was the only thing holding reality together and Tardis was essentially an extension of it. Since she and Rose were one, when Rose perished, her soul had been unable to move on.  
  
It was an interesting situation to say the least. Once Rose accepted the situation, the two of them began to truly function as one, just as they had done twice before. The first on a space station before the Doctor and millions of Daleks. The second in an underground base before a group of humans and the immortal. They were the Bad Wolf.  
  
Her powers came from Tardis (as her consciousness wished to be called) but it was through Rose that she was able to wield them. While the former always carried enormous power, her very nature prevented her from wielding it and the latter’s nature allowed her to channel it.  
  
With the return of cognitive thought came the desire to visit people. If she was to exist this way for the indefinite future, she may as well put her abilities to good use.  
  
The Doctor she would not risk by contacting again and, truly, had she been in full control of herself, she would not have to begin with. At least her feral self had known better than to go onboard the _Valiant_. Unshielded, she would’ve definitely drawn the attention of the Master. It was a miracle she hadn’t alerted herself to the Doctor while poking around the Archangel Network. As much as it pained Rose, Tardis’s logic won out. They would not go near the Doctor again.  
  
The first person Bad Wolf paid a visit to was Martha Jones. She found her in China. Martha was thinner than she remembered her being. There were noticeable dark circles under her eyes and her shoulders were hunched over.  
  
 _She looks so tired,_ Rose lamented.  
  
Bad Wolf could see images from Martha’s mind and gathered what had occurred for her since her feral self had last seen her.  
  
 _She is grieving,_ Tardis said. _She has seen horrible things. Japan was destroyed. She was the only one to escape._  
  
Bad Wolf cocked her head to the side and drifted down to her friend’s side. She tried speaking to her, touching her, but her words went unheard and her she had simply passed clean through her. She may as well have been a proper ghost.  
  
She followed her for several days, keeping watch as she rested and slept. She scared animals away from her or, if she could tell Martha was hungry, would scare them _towards_ her. Several times she became aware of Remnants–Toclafane–in the vicinity, and she charged after them with single-minded determination. They never even made it close to her. Bad Wolf went with her into the first survivor camp she came across and listened as Martha told them her stories. She had been concerned that Martha might not have been able to speak to people without Rose there, but the TARDIS’s translation protocols and circuits was still intact.  
  
Half of her was content to simply stay with Martha but as time wore on, her other half began to grow restless and agitated. There was truly no need to follow the human woman all across Asia. Bad Wolf had more important things she could be doing. Killing Toclafane, refining her skills–perhaps finding a way to make herself heard and seen–and there were others she needed to see.  
  
Bad Wolf searched for Sarah Jane Smith and found her within a labor camp. She discovered just by observing that Sarah Jane had heard Rose and Martha’s legend as well as some of their stories and she had taken it upon herself to spread her own stories of the Doctor. Bad Wolf was proud of her but, of course, her praise did not reach the physical dimension.  
  
Many of her searches, however, proved fruitless. A majority of Rose’s friends and kin could not be located, including Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, whose apparent death struck a chord in Tardis as well. She looked for many of the aliens Rose had helped during her time with Torchwood. Those she found were living out in the wild to avoid capture. On a lark, she decided to look for Martha’s brother. She found him alive in a labor camp in Northern England going by a different name.  
  
She found Gwen Cooper, Ianto Jones, and Owen Harper living in a village in the Himalayas with twenty villagers that had survived. Toshiko Sato was not there. Bad Wolf did not bother to search for her. She knew the others would never leave Tosh behind if she were still alive. The members of Torchwood seemed to be doing quite well, considering. They wore clothes they’d brought with them as well as clothing the villagers had provided them.  
  
Bad Wolf enjoyed observing them. Some of the villagers had acted as tour guides or translators before, though Owen, Ianto, and Gwen seemed to picking up on their language and vice versa. Owen was serving as their doctor. Gwen helped with monitoring the children and with the farming and hunting. Ianto helped make food, wash clothes, and helped with any repairs that were needed.  
  
Owen in particular captured her interest. He seemed to be aware of her on some level. She liked hovering near him while he had a patient and Rose always supported a little healing boost when he wasn’t looking. But he always seemed fidgety when she was near, looking around and over his shoulder a little more than normal. His timelines were especially intriguing. There was a choice in his future–his true future–but not one he himself would make. The more likely option would lead him to becoming a vessel for Death. Perhaps he was experiencing an echo through the rifts in Time that allowed him to sense her.  
  
But even he couldn’t hear her.  
  
Two months after becoming aware again, Bad Wolf was growing restless because of her isolation. She wanted interaction. Part of her was baffled at the very human need to be social.  
  
She didn’t have to be seen. She just wanted to converse with someone other than herself. As being of pure energy and thought, she could only interact on the telepathic plane. And if she tried to make telepathic contact with anyone under Archangel’s influence, she would bring attention to herself. So she had refrained from using her telepathy. There were several people she knew who would probably be able to at least hear her, but only one she knew was still alive. She had restrained herself so far out of compassion for him. Knowing Rose had died would greatly hurt him.  
  
But she had reached the point where she’d rather deal with his grief than go without being known for any longer. And, truthfully, she believed he might be able to help her. Knowing his exact location made traveling to him easier. When the world reformed, she was in a large cavern she remembered from life.  
  
The boy himself was sitting in front of her with a group of other children, peeling potatoes from a burlap sack. They each had unlit lanterns and torches next to them. But within a second of her arrival he stiffened, nostrils flaring, and his head whipped back and forth.  
  
“What’s wrong?” one of the girls asked.  
  
“There’s…something…”  
  
He could sense her more potently than Owen had. But could he hear her? _“Elliot.”_  
  
He gasped and whipped his head around. She saw his eyes flick around but they didn’t seem to settle on her.  
  
“Is someone coming?” a boy demanded, tightening his grip on the knife he held.  
  
“I don’t…” Elliot shook his head the tiniest bit and turned around.  
  
  
The children finished peeling potatoes, gathered up the peelings and stuffed them in the sack. The five of them headed towards the ‘kitchen’ cave with the bowls. Elliot did not go with them and none of the other children asked him to come with them either. Still a loner. He went off on his own just down one of the tunnels leading away from their camp. He used his lantern to see where he was going, but the way he moved indicated that he’d walked this path many times. He didn’t go very far before sitting down against the wall.  
  
After a moment, he sighed, raising his lantern. “Alright, who’s there?”  
  
 _“Me.”_  
  
Elliot gasped and the lantern slipped through his fingers and hit the floor, shutting off on impact. He cussed and scrambled to find his lantern in the pitch black.  
  
 _Since when does he swear?_ Rose thought. Never once in all the time he had traveled with her and Martha had he said anything worse than ‘crap’.  
  
Her ‘vision’ was not impaired by the darkness and she observed silently as he fumbled for the ‘on’ switch. She had no doubt he could hear her. She’d been right! Finally, someone who knew she existed. But now she had to decide how to proceed. She could stay and ask for his help, or leave, letting him think it was a vision, and figure it out on her own. The lantern flicked back to life and he held it up, turning this way and that. Little did he know that there was nothing to see. She was formless.  
  
“Where are you?” He demanded with false bravado.  
  
 _“Right in front of you.”_  
  
He jerked sharply, frowning. “Where?”  
  
 _“Precisely one foot.”_  
  
“Why can’t I see you?”  
  
 _“Because I have no body. You cannot see something that has no form.”_  
  
Elliot licked his lips. “Who are you?”  
  
 _“You do not recognize my voice?”_  
  
“You sound like Rose.”  
  
 _“Well, there’s a reason for that.”_  
  
“Rose is long gone. And her voice isn’t echo-y.”  
  
 _“Think, child. You know who I am.”_  
  
He swallowed heavily. “Are you…Bad Wolf?”  
  
 _“I am.”_  
  
Elliot shivered and shrank back, almost curling in on himself to get away from her. He’d been afraid of the Doctor, once. Now he was afraid of her.  
  
 _“Please don’t be afraid of me,”_ Bad Wolf pleaded. _“You are the first person to whom I’ve spoken since I woke up.”_  
  
He stared right at her. Maybe it was his abilities that let him know where she was, or maybe he’d finally pinpointed her ‘voice’ (though she doubted that). Then something shifted in his eyes and his jaw tightened. “Prove it. Tell me something only she’d know.”  
  
 _“When you were ten, you helped her find John Smith by listening to the fob watch. You spoke to her through the psychic paper. When you found John Smith, you were afraid of him because of who he was.”_  
  
Elliot breathed in slowly and then exhaled, convinced. “Where’s Rose?”  
  
 _“…Gone.”_  
  
“G-gone? She’s…dead?”  
  
 _“Yes.”_  
  
“Oh God,” he breathed, shuddering. He raked his hands through his hair and squeezed his eyes shut, teeth clenched against a scream. “No, no, no, no.” His face twisted as tears formed in his eyes, and he shook his head in denial. “Why? _Why_? Why does everyone leave me?!”  
  
 _“I’m still here, Elliot. I really am right here. I **am** Rose.” _  
  
His body shuddered and he let out a quiet sob, still shaking his head.  
  
Bad Wolf felt his emotions acutely and a tremor ran through her. _“I’m sorry. I wasn’t going to come but you were the only person I knew who would **know** me…other than the Time Lords. But making myself known to one would be making myself known to the other as well.” _  
  
Elliot lowered his hands and looked up at her slowly. He sniffed.  
  
 _“…I didn’t want you to know, I didn’t want to hurt you, but I–I’ve been going mad with the isolation.”_  
  
“You were lonely? Shouting at the world but no one could hear?”  
  
She opted not to respond verbally. Instead she nuzzled his mind. He sucked in a sharp breath…then exhaled softly.  
  
“How did she–you die?”  
  
 _“Moran.”_  
  
What color that remained in his face drained away, leaving him ashen. Bad Wolf told him how Moran had continued to pursue them across the country–and how he was always finding them–and the trail of blood he left in his wake. How Rose had finally had enough and attacked, killing them all. But she hadn’t found Moran in time... There had been a hostage, and Martha had been so brave. She told him how Rose had pushed her out of the way and taken Moran’s bullet instead.  
  
He closed his eyes and sighed. He was quiet for a long minute. “I’m sorry.”  
  
 _“Don’t be sorry for me. I am dead but I am not gone.”_  
  
Elliot opened his eyes. “That’s what I don’t get. If you died, shouldn’t you be in heaven? …If you believe in that, I mean.”  
  
 _“You’re right. Rose should have moved on. But when Rose died her mind was still attached to Tardis and she refused to release her. So now we’re stuck like this, part of the very thing holding reality together. There are two minds making up one whole one, and the result is me: Bad Wolf.”_  
  
“Um. Okay. Hold on. Let me see if I got this. Rose was able to do all that stuff because she had part of the TARDIS’s mind in her head. I knew that. She died and maybe her soul went off somewhere, maybe it didn’t, but her mind couldn’t leave because the TARDIS wouldn’t let her go. Now they’re both still together and active and that makes you?”  
  
Bad Wolf nodded. _“Essentially.”_  
  
“And I’m the only one who can hear you because…?”  
  
 _“You really have to ask?”_  
  
“My telepathy stuff?”  
  
 _“I believe your clairvoyant abilities may also be playing a role here.”_  
  
Elliot cocked his head to one side and she recognized the look on his face as the one he wore when in deep thought. “Rose told me that it was really easy for her to talk with me telepathically, but I wasn’t the only one she could talk to.”  
  
 _“What are you thinking?”_  
  
“You’re not making an effort but I can hear you. What happens if you actually try to make an effort?”  
  
She was proud. _“I have considered it. But I didn’t truly know if you would be able to hear me. I had no way of knowing if it was possible at all.”_  
  
“But now you do. So maybe you can figure out a way so everyone can.”  
  
 _“Yes. That was my second reason for coming to you. I believe it may be possible to make myself visible. I could see myself when I first woke up. Before I knew what had happened, I looked like I had when I died. But then…I lost myself for a while and my form went, too.”_  
  
“You don’t know how to get the form back?” He checked.  
  
 _“No.”_  
  
“And if I agree to help you, you’ll stay for a while?”  
  
Bad Wolf laughed softly at the hopefulness on his face but sobered when she realized how serious he was. Poor child. He craved love and affection and all those who he depended on to provide it were gone. _“Yeah. But I cannot stay forever.”_  
  
He sighed through his nose. “I know.”  
  
Elliot couldn’t stay down the tunnel for long. Cave life was dangerous and the children were always under supervision. Elliot was allowed on his own because of his age and his? unique needs. But every so often, even he had to check in with one of the adult members of the family that kept an eye on, or a search party would be organized. He’d learned this the hard way. Plus, it was almost dinnertime and even though they tried to ration their food carefully, it really was first come, first served.  
  
Bad Wolf followed alongside him while he stood in the queue for dinner. Potato soup–hence all the potatoes they’d been peeling earlier. She followed him over to the tables where he ate with the family who kept an eye on him–a man and woman named Aaron and Nina from Germany and their daughter, Alyssa. She spoke to him throughout the meal while simultaneously attempting to strengthen and reform the telepathic signals that made up her ‘voice’ into something they could understand. Once or twice it seemed as if Alyssa was beginning to hear her–and it would be the child who heard her first, her mind fresh and open, and unbound by the beliefs instilled in adults–but the little girl never turned to look at her so she could only assume she never quite got through.  
  
Elliot, though, could hear her quite clearly. Every so often he’d snicker or throw a look of incredulity in her direction. Aaron, Nina, and Alyssa didn’t seem surprised by his reactions to seemingly nothing, which could only mean they were aware of his psychic nature. This could be beneficial.  
  
Even though he had a family watching over him, Elliot roomed by himself in a small tent. He explained to Bad Wolf how he’d been offered a place with Aaron, Nina, and Alyssa in their larger tent, but he had refused. He had agreed to be under their watch, but he hadn’t wanted a new family. Families tended to leave him behind, one way or another.  
  
She was a being of immense power, born of Time itself, and she alone could see it in its entirety. If she so chose she could list every single species that would ever exist, the stages of their evolution, precisely when they began, when they became extinct. She could reduce creatures and objects alike to atoms and dust, reach beyond the veil and retrieve a soul, heal a body on the brink of death, or even erase them from existence. Yet she still felt the sting of the boy’s words as if he’d slapped her with them.  
  
“Are you tired?” Elliot asked.  
  
 _“I do not require sleep.”_  
  
“You don’t feel right. Kind of…less there.”  
  
 _“I have depleted my energy. I must rejuvenate.”_  
  
He cocked his head to one side. “How?”  
  
 _“My power comes from time. When I am my full self, I carry the time vortex itself within me. Would I could, I’d simply enter the time vortex for a few moments. It would be the equivalent of a full meal and a good night’s rest. But…if I part the fabric of time even the tiniest bit, the walls of the paradox will break and the reapers will come. I cannot allow it. They are there now, swarming at the edge of the fabric…waiting…”_  
  
He shuddered. “Stop it.”  
  
 _“Apologies. But you understand why I cannot simply nip to the vortex? I must absorb time as it passes. I shall be fine by the time you awaken.”_  
  
When he decided to get ready for bed, she allowed her attention to drift as she begin rejuvenating. While he wasn’t looking, she turned his covers back. She could not touch the physical world but her mind was strong enough to influence it. He didn’t seem to notice what she’d done, as he wormed his way into his bedding and pulling the blankets snugly over his shoulders.  
  
Finally, he glanced in her direction. “Rose–I mean–Bad Wolf?”  
  
 _“I am here.”_  
  
He laid his head down on the pillow and was silent. She couldn’t tell if he wanted her there or not.  
  
 _“I had planned on remaining here as I rejuvenated but if you wish me to leave–”_  
  
“No! Stay.” His voice was tiny and she thought he sounded very much like he had the nights after his parents were killed.  
  
 _“Very well.”_  
  
Elliot was quiet for a few more minutes though she was quite aware he hadn’t even begun falling asleep. “Wolf?”  
  
 _“I am here.”_  
  
“Did…. Did it hurt?”  
  
 _“Yes.”_  
  
He said nothing but his thoughts were strong enough that she was able to glimpse them without even trying. He was thinking of his parents’ deaths.  
  
 _“Your parents were shot in their heads. They would barely have had time to process the sound of the gunshot before they were dead. They did not suffer.”_  
  
“But she did.”  
  
 _“Rose died exactly 98 seconds after she was shot. She was not in pain for long. …Remember, she is me. She’s dead, but she’s not gone.”_  
  
Elliot sighed quietly. “Rose, you promised you’d come back for me when all this was over. You promised I could travel with you and the Doctor and I’d have a home.”  
  
Bad Wolf returned her entire attention to him immediately. _“Elliot. When Rose made that promise, she did not possess my knowledge.”_  
  
He rolled over so he was facing her. “What do you mean?”  
  
 _“This might be difficult to comprehend. Are you sure you wish to know?”_  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“None of this was meant to happen. Time cannot continue as it should if this year remains a reality and so Time will remove it. When the paradox machine is switched off, the paradox will be undone, and everything from the moment it became active and onwards will be erased.”  
  
Staring, he slowly sat up. “This never happens?”  
  
 _“If we are successful.”_  
  
He exhaled sharply, puffing out his cheeks. “Wow. So this…you…I…wow okay, my head hurts.”  
  
 _“Do not attempt to comprehend.”_  
  
His eyes flipped wide as he realized what it meant. “Then…my parents? Macy?”  
  
 _“Yes.”_  
  
“Everyone at the farm?”  
  
 _“Everyone everywhere.”_  
  
“You?”  
  
 _“Absolutely,”_ she lied.  
  
The grin that followed lit up his face brighter than the sun and he laughed giddily at the ray of hope she’d provided. 


	69. An Echo

_Time will reverse. Everything will be undone._  
  
It’s what he told himself to keep going. His ray of hope in the void left behind in the wake of her death. There had been comfort in knowing she was alive during their separation. But knowing that she no longer breathed, her heart no longer beat, and her face never lit up in a smile was almost impossible to bear.   
  
Sometimes the mantra wasn’t enough for the Doctor. Sometimes the tenuous walls he’d built up came crashing down and waves of grief swept over him again. He was well practiced in not letting emotion show, but there were times when he had to look away from everyone for a few moments and allow his face to contort as it needed to, even if he would not allow the tears to fall.   
  
It was in these moments that he acknowledged that her death was as real as his own mother’s during the War. As Romana’s. Susan’s. Adric’s.   
  
It was in these moments that he wanted to see this group in Oregon. He wanted to see the faces of the people Rose had fought to protect. He wanted to know what was so special about them. Or just confirm that there _wasn’t_ anything special. That they were just ordinary people and Rose had just been Rose by protecting them. She had always been reckless when it came to helping others, always been so willing to throw her life away when he needed her _alive_ and _with_ him.   
  
The worst part was that he hadn’t been able to say goodbye. Hadn’t been able to hold her one last time, tell her he loved her. Hadn’t even had a chance to save her. He didn’t even know where her grave was, or what had happened to her body.   
  
At least Martha was still out there. As long as she kept going, Rose would not have died in vain. He hoped she knew that.  
  
 _Time will reverse. Everything will be undone._  
  
And if not–if their plan failed–there were plenty of ways to provoke one of the gun-toting guards around here into shooting him. Or maybe he would just stop eating and sleeping and let his body fail on its own. Then he could join her in death.  
  


~*~

  
  
“We are gonna get in soooooooo much trouble!” Alyssa giggled as she danced around in a circle.   
  
“Not if we get back down quick enough,” Elliot reminded her.   
  
Bad Wolf hovered next to the two children who were above ground for the first time in months. Snow covered the ground and the sky was overcast, but they had greeted the surface world with bright smiles and breathed in the crisp fresh air with relish.   
  
They needed to be somewhere they wouldn’t be interrupted or overheard. So Elliot had suggested the surface. None of them had been up there since before the last time it snowed and they wouldn’t go up for a few days yet. It was too dangerous to keep a guard posted out there since there was little cover without all the foliage and they would leave a clear trail in the snow back to the cave. They’d also needed a test subject. Alyssa hadn’t been out of the caves since November (it was mid-February) and when Elliot had told her he needed her help with something on the surface, she agreed without even asking what it was.  
  
The eleven year old was currently wrapped in her father’s blue winter coat, which fell clear past her knees, two layers of trousers and winter boots. She hadn’t been able to find any gloves and instead wore a pair of socks on her hands. Elliot was fortunate enough to have a jacket of his own from his time traveling with Rose and Martha, which he now wore over a hoodie, plus a pair of track pants and boots.  
  
Alyssa sighed, tossing her silvery hair over her shoulder. “Fine. Whatchya need my help with?”  
  
“You know how I can hear things that other people can’t?”  
  
“Yep.”  
  
“There’s someone that only I can hear and she needs to be heard by others.”   
  
Alyssa’s brow furrowed. “Huh?”  
  
He sighed. “How do I even explain this? There’s…someone here–but she has no body–”  
  
“Like a ghost?”  
  
“Like a ghost,” he agreed. “But not exactly.”  
  
“Here?” Alyssa looked around as if expecting to see a ghostly figure lurking around. “Where?”  
  
Elliot glanced around, using his abilities to determine to exact location of Bad Wolf, then gestured at her. “Right there.”  
  
“Can you see her?”  
  
“No. She doesn’t have a form. She’s just a mind. But I can sense her and hear her.”  
  
Alyssa frowned at the empty space where Bad Wolf floated. “How d’you know you can trust her?”  
  
Elliot exhaled softly and rubbed his arm with his hand. “Because she’s a friend of mine.”  
  
“Are you _sure_?” the girl insisted. “If you can’t see her–”  
  
“I know it’s her. Trust me, I know. And I know why she’s this way. I’m one of the only people who can hear her because of what I can do. She’s working on a way to make herself heard by everyone.”  
  
“And you need a normal person for that.” Alyssa nodded. “Uh, no offense.”  
  
“None taken.” He looked at Bad Wolf. “You ready?”  
  
 _“I am if she is. Ask her if she heard anything odd at dinner last night.”_  
  
He did. Alyssa cocked her head to the side and thought about it. “Not…really? I mean, I just heard people talking.”   
  
_“Did any of the voices sound strange? How did you put it–echo-y?”_  
  
Elliot relayed this to her. Alyssa swiped the tip of her tongue across of her teeth pensively. “Not echo-y. But I did hear someone talking through a walkie talkie at one point.”  
  
“A walkie talkie?” Elliot asked. “What made you think it was a walkie talkie?”  
  
“Just how the voice sounded. Kinda hollow and far away. Faded in and out a lot.”  
  
He stared at her. “Alyssa, none of us have walkie talkies. It’s not safe.”  
  
Her eyes got very round. “So that voice–”  
  
“Was her.”  
  
 _“Excellent.”_ Bad Wolf would have smiled if she could’ve. That meant she was finally starting to get through to the rest of the world. All things considering, this was going swimmingly.   
  
For the next half hour, Bad Wolf spoke almost nonstop while trying different ways of manipulating how her ‘voice’ was projected. Alyssa was instructed to raise her hand every time she thought she heard something so Bad Wolf could know what was working. Out of curiosity, Bad Wolf drifted over to the girl and reached for her mind, careful to remain on the surface so as to not overwhelm her, and examined the way it was responding as she continued to speak. She was well aware of Bad Wolf’s proximity on a subconscious level, but her telepathic abilities were not potent enough to perceive her the way Elliot could. At least not as she was now. Perhaps if she could simply heighten the girl’s abilities–  
  
 _No!_ Rose shouted. _It’ll only hurt her._   
  
_And it would be illogical to alter everyone with whom we wish to converse,_ Tardis concurred.   
  
Bad Wolf continued to speak in a steady stream while monitoring the way Alyssa was responding. She alternated between stories, astrophysics, contemporary song lyrics, nursery rhymes, and listing the breeds of felines and canines in the world. Finally, thirty minutes after they began, as she was reciting “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, Alyssa began singing right along with her. Elliot, who’d been sitting a few feet away on a rock drawing the landscape on his sketchpad, whipped around in surprise.  
  
“Are you–”   
  
Alyssa held up her finger and finished the last line in the song before smiling at him.  
  
 _“You can hear me?”_ It was almost too good to be true. What she’d been doing, it was so simple really, she should’ve thought of it weeks ago. She’d sent a prompt to Alyssa’s brain to show it how to process the telepathic signals it was receiving so they could be understood as speech.   
  
“Mmhmm. Yep. Like you’re sitting right next to me.”  
  
Bad Wolf couldn’t hold back a laugh of delight and she zipped around the girl, wanting to scoop her up in a hug. _“At last!”_  
  
Elliot stuffed his sketchpad inside his jacket and leaped over the rock. “How’d you do it?”  
  
 _“I’m sending a little instruction to her brain so it knows how to translate the type of telepathic signals it’s receiving. I’m pretty sure I can regulate this task into a subconscious–”_  
  
“What’s your name?” Alyssa interrupted, completely uninterested in the complicated talk. “How did you die?”  
  
Bad Wolf halted in front of the girl and pondered how to answer. Before she could, however, something tickled on the edge of her awareness. She expanded her senses towards the sensation and very nearly hissed out loud when she identified the signatures of a small swarm of Remnants. They were heading in the general direction of the cave, but from what she could detect there was no urgency. An ordinary sweep, which was going to turn deadly the moment they saw the children. She had to get them inside and conceal the signs of their venture.   
  
She was silent long enough that Alyssa started glancing around unsurely. “Uh, hello? …Where’d she go?”  
  
“She’s right in front of you,” Elliot informed her though his brow was furrowed. He, too, could sense something wasn’t right. But they were too far away to register as a threat on his own radar.   
  
Oh, the girl had asked a question. She should answer that. _“I am the Bad Wolf,”_ she said. _“I am neither living nor dead. …And you have been above ground for precisely thirty-two minutes. You will be missed soon if you are not already.”_  
  
“Crap, she’s right.” Elliot glanced at the entrance to the cave.   
  
_“Go,”_ Bad Wolf urged while trying not to sound too urgent. _“I will deal with the snow and join you below shortly.”_  
  
Alyssa scampered off quickly but Elliot stared at Bad Wolf long and hard for a moment. _“Go,”_ she repeated. _“Please.”_  
  
His eyes widened and he didn’t need to be told again. Maybe it was something in her tone or maybe the Remnants had registered on his radar. Whatever the case, he was now making a beeline for the cave and that was all that mattered. They slipped inside the entrance, which was concealed by a thick mass of roots, grass, and branches the cave dwellers had made, and she listened as they descended down to safety.  
  
If anyone would have been watching, they would have witnessed most of the snow in a twelve meter radius suddenly lift into the air as if blown by a great wind, swirl around in the air for a few seconds, before descending back to the ground. When it settled, all signs of the children’s presence had been erased. Telekinesis, the ability to control things without physical contact, was one of the many tricks Rose had never been capable of. She’d had the power but lacked the mental capacity to wield it and it was doubtful she ever would have. Humans really needed to learn to use more of their brains.   
  
_At least I have a brain._ Rose muttered.  
  
 _Just because our brains are in different forms does not mean mine is nonexistent,_ Tardis retorted. _And I happen to use mine to its fullest capacity, thank you very much.  
  
Touché. _  
  
Satisfied they were suitably concealed, Bad Wolf shot off in the direction of the oncoming Remnants. She wanted them well away from the cave entrance when she decimated them just in case someone came looking around their last known coordinates.   
  
There was something about the rage she felt every time she saw them that was quite unlike any other. Both her halves hated them for their own reasons and she felt it all quite potently, but underneath was an underlying current of primal anger that had no direct source. They were abominations and their very existence was against the Laws of Time. They _had_ to be erased.   
  
The Remnants shared an unorthodox telepathic bond themselves and she was able to use it to draw their attention to a remote area about fifteen miles north of the cave. As they neared she could feel their curiosity as well as their delight at the prospect of an intriguing prey. She waited for them a hundred feet off the ground where she’d first sent the telepathic signal. When the Remnants arrived, they immediately began sweeping the area in groups of twos and threes. She counted thirty-five in total. Once they were far enough apart, she descended. One by one she enveloped each of them and turned their bodies to dust and sent their souls into oblivion.   
  
The other Remnants became aware that they were under attack and began swarming towards her. All the other times she had been nothing but a specter, an unseen and unheard executioner. But now, now she knew how to make them hear her. And she let them hear her laughter as she zipped around them, exploding them into dust at random. They fired their lasers in all directions, blades slashing, but none of them had any effect on her.   
  
When she was done, nothing remained but thirty-five piles of dust that were already being scattered to the wind. She surveyed her work with satisfaction, scanned the area to make sure none remained, and then dematerialized.  
  
She rematerialized back in the cave and promptly located Elliot helping Alyssa sneak her father’s coat back where it belonged. He glanced up when she neared and then muttered to Alyssa that she was back.   
  
_“Alyssa, go on about your day,”_ Bad Wolf instructed. _“We will tell you when we need you again.”_  
  
The little girl nodded obediently and left. The moment she was out of earshot, Elliot sighed quietly and glanced at Bad Wolf. “How many?” he asked simply.  
  
 _“Thirty-five. I destroyed them fifteen miles from here. You need not worry about them any longer. Oh, and I gave the snow a bit of a whirl so no one will see your tracks.”_  
  
He inclined his head to the side. “You can do that?”  
  
 _“I cannot touch the world but I can manipulate it.”_  
  
“Cool.”   
  
The three of them went up to the surface once a day so they didn’t have to be discreet and Alyssa and Elliot could see the sun. Up there was where Bad Wolf usually practiced her range. Her voice worked like any other–the further the source, the fainter it was. She wasn’t willing to test how far she could be if she screamed, just in case it travelled too far–in any direction, including down.   
  
While underground, Bad Wolf practiced on numbers. She knew she could make one ordinary child and one psychic teenager hear her, but could she do more? Elliot recruited some of the other kids under the guise he had a new game for them to try. They all were able to hear her easily. When she decided she wanted to try testing her ‘voice’ on adults, Elliot lead her down to one of the smaller caverns where a smaller group of adults lived on their own. They, too, heard her.   
  
All that remained by the third day was the matter of her invisibility. People could hear her without issue, but she still was formless. She, Alyssa, and Elliot returned to the surface the third morning for practice. They didn’t want anyone to see a woman flickering in and out of sight down there–might cause panic. But no matter what she did, neither kid could see her.   
  
“Can you even see yourself?” He asked.  
  
 _“No. I am…formless.”_  
  
Elliot scoffed throwing his hands in the air. “Well, DUH!! How are we supposed to see you if you’re not even _there_!? Jeez.”  
  
 _“…Um. Oops?”_  
  
The annoyed look melted right off his face, leaving him looking stunned.   
  
_“What?”_  
  
“Nothing… it’s just… you just sounded so much like Rose. …I could even picture how your face would look.”  
  
Bad Wolf said nothing. Elliot stared unwaveringly at the spot where she was. Alyssa glanced between the pair of them with wide-eyes for a few seconds. Then she cleared her throat. “So, uh, wanna go play in the snow while she works on that?”  
  
Elliot blinked then looked down at Alyssa. “Sure.”  
  
Bad Wolf watched as the two of them moved away from her. Alyssa hadn’t known Rose so she was fine. Elliot had known Rose for such a brief time, so he was struggling to grasp what and who she was. How would Martha take it when she finally found out? And what about the Doctor? He wouldn’t have long to know her as she was now but, still, she wondered and worried.   
  
He meant more to her than any one or thing in existence. She was created, first and foremost, to save him, since Rose and the TARDIS has been unable to do it individually. She held all their feelings inside her, all their love. More than anything, she loved him. She knew her last minutes would be with him…but what if he rejected her? Rose knew he was afraid of the Bad Wolf and, in a way, hated her for what she represented for Rose. What if he didn’t see her for what she really was?  
  
 _Worry not. He cares about you and I more than he does anyone else in the universe._ Tardis soothed. _Even if he fears whom we become together, his love for us will never diminish.  
  
Yeah, you’re right. …What would Mum think if she could see me now? _ Rose wondered.  
  
 _I think it best we not allow our thoughts to go down that path._  
  
Bad Wolf sighed. She needed to get back on track and figure out how to get herself a body. She knew she’d looked like herself when she’d awoken, but had no idea how that had happened, only that she’d lost it when Rose was put into her protective coma while Tardis mended the barrier. It was something she had to put effort into, then, like the signal she sent for words, even if she could teach herself to do it subconsciously.   
  
She was aware of herself, a mass of energy always stretching and retracting, ebbing and flowing as she moved around. Turning inward, she began to mold herself into a human shape. As she did, she thought about what she’d looked like before. Her form had been identical to the one she’d died in, blood and everything. The form was instinctive and its appearance must’ve been an echo from the moment of her death.  
  
 _There._ She could see it in her mind as clearly as she could see the snow on the ground. Everything from her messy brown hair, her shabby clothes even more tattered from fighting, skin pale, body thin from too much strain and not enough food, And the blood…it was bright red, fresh from her body, thickest just below her ribcage where she’d been shot and thinner as it spread out across her torso. It was on part of her sleeve and all over her hand.   
  
She looked like a ghost from a horror film.   
  
But right now that was all she had and it would have to do. She hoped there was a way to do away with all the blood. It certainly wouldn’t help her earn people’s trust. She’d work on that soon.   
  
Bad Wolf glanced down to see if she’d made any progress…and saw herself. Hair, skin, the earthy clothes, and the blood–all of it, just like that. She was there. She laughed aloud, surprised and pleased by the ease of it.  
  
“What the–aaaah!” Elliot screamed. He was staring right at her, wide-eyed, the color rapidly draining from his face as he saw exactly what Rose looked like when she died.   
  
He squeezed his eyes shut, sucking in a breath between his teeth. Alyssa, blissfully blind to what Elliot was seeing, put her hands on his arm and back worriedly. “What’s wrong?”  
  
 _“I’m sorry!”_ Bad Wolf cried, zipping over to him. _“I only just did it, I didn’t know you’d see!”_  
  
“It’s…” He peeked open one eye then promptly shut it. “Sorry. I just…I wasn’t expecting…. Is that how she looked when…?”  
  
 _“I believe so.”_  
  
He inhaled shakily and shook his head again, quickly. “I’m going back inside. C’mon Alyssa.”  
  
“But I wanna stay out here!” she protested.   
  
_“She can’t see me. I’ll keep an eye on her for a little while longer,”_ Bad Wolf offered.  
  
Elliot’s eyes snapped open and he glared at her. “And what if she does see you? She’s eleven!”  
  
 _“I have little doubt she’s seen worse.”_  
  
“So not the point,” he snapped.   
  
She could hear the quiver at the edge of his sentence, could see the hints of tears in his eyes. Knowing your friend was dead was one thing but seeing it… Bad Wolf sighed and allowed herself to fade from view. _“Alyssa, go with him.”_  
  
She did, protesting all the way, but Elliot didn’t so much as look at her. Bad Wolf remained above ground and gave the snow a whirl to remove traces of their presence while contemplating what to do next. She wished she could go after him and offer him comfort, but she knew her presence would not be beneficial. That being said, she should probably figure out how to alter her form (she was practically a goddess in her own right, surely something as small as this would be possible) before letting him see her again.   
  
Who else did she know that would be willing and able to help her? Martha seemed like the obvious choice, but she had a job to do and that job wasn’t playing guinea pig for the incorporeal entity that her best friend was trapped in. The Doctor was out of the question. None of the people she met in any survivor camps knew her well enough. The former companions she knew well enough to ask for help were dead.   
  
Really, that left one group qualified to help her. Good thing they were used to the weird and alien on a daily basis. She found them right where she’d last left them: a remote village in the Himalayas.   
  
It was late evening when she materialized in the village. The half moon was rising steadily higher, bathing the streets in silvery white. She could feel the human life around her, most of them in their homes for the night, as well as the wildlife beyond the village. She drifted silently through the streets, a specter in the shadows, towards the house where Owen, Gwen, and Ianto now lived. The village had become something of a haven for others in the area and, as such, space was limited, but the members of Torchwood had been given a larger flat to themselves.   
  
That was where she found them, eating dinner on the floor in the kitchen. They were bundled up against the cold (which Bad Wolf was aware of, even if she couldn’t feel it) and seated in front of the stove for warmth. Once more she was keenly aware of Toshiko’s absence. Even if the three of them hadn’t physically left any space where she ‘should be’ it was still there.   
  
She was wondering how to announce her presence to them–maybe she’d knock something over, find something to knock against the door, or maybe just start talking–when Owen suddenly stiffened, his back going ridged. He’d been aware of her to some degree last time she’d visited and that was before she’d learned how to project herself.   
  
“Owen? You alright?” Gwen questioned.   
  
“Not sure,” he replied a moment later. He licked his lips, eyes flicking around the room. “Just that weird feeling I had before. Like I’m being watched or something.”  
  
Gwen stood up, setting her bowl on the floor, and walked over to the window. She peered out. “No one out there, Owen.” She untied the cord holding their curtain in place and let it fall. “Better?”  
  
He shook his head. “It’s not out there. It’s _in here_.”  
  
Ianto frowned, lowering his bowl. “You don’t think the spheres learned how to be invisible?”  
  
Bad Wolf couldn’t help it. She laughed out loud.   
  
Owen let out a yelp that was precisely two octaves higher than his normal voice, Gwen nearly jumped out of her skin, and poor Ianto dropped his bowl, which clattered to the ground and its contents spilt everywhere. Bad Wolf scooped the food off the floor and returned it to the bowl without a thought. Owen swore colorfully at the sight and Ianto made a hasty retreat, scooting across the floor on his bum. Gwen recovered first. She plunged her hand into her trousers and pulled out a gun, holding it out in front of her. Ianto made a dive for the pot next to the stove and brandished it like a weapon. Owen leaped to his feet, teeth bared.   
  
She sighed and popped over behind Owen. _“That was terrible.”_ Owen jumped in surprise and spun around to face her, stepping back. Interesting. He must be able to perceive her voice coming from a certain direction as opposed to being omnidirectional. The children had never mentioned that. _“Really, I could’ve killed you by now.”_  
  
“Who are you?” Owen demanded.   
  
She could just out and say it. She could. She probably should. But she wanted to have a little fun with them. It’d been such a long time. _“I’m me.”_  
  
“What are you?”  
  
 _“That’s the million dollar question these days. Depends on how you look at it. I could be a ghost or I could be a metaphysical being of time. …Or both. Dunno, I kinda like both.”_  
  
“Stop talking in riddles!” Ianto barked though his voice wavered enough that he sounded scared rather than threatening. But it was Gwen who really had her attention. The Welsh woman’s eyes were narrowed slightly and her lips were parted in thought. She was letting the guys do all the talking while she listened and processed. She was very close to figuring it out.  
  
Bad Wolf popped in front of her, just inches away from her face. _“Ask Gwen. She’s almost got it figured out. …You’ve always had an affinity for ghosts. Must run in your family.”_  
  
The penny dropped. Gwen gasped, her mouth opened and closed a few times soundlessly then she murmured, “Rose?”  
  
 _“Very good.”_  
  
She started to slowly lower her gun but Owen held out his hand to stop her. “You’re just gonna believe it? It could be changing its voice to sound like her so we’ll trust it. …Rose is a freak show but she can’t turn invisible or walk through walls and she’d have no bloody idea where we are.”   
  
_“I knew you were in the Himalayas. From there it was a matter of locating your timelines. Wasn’t too hard. Don’t worry,”_ she added when she saw their panicked looks. _“I’m the only one who can trace you that way. You’re safe.”_  
  
“Yeah, we’ll be the judge of that. Still not sure we can trust you.”  
  
 _“You want me to prove myself? Fine. In May, we received a call requesting our assistance in the Himalayas. You, Gwen, Ianto, and Tosh went on the mission but I stayed behind in case Jack came back. Which he did, by the way, two days before this all started. The Doctor and Martha were with him.”_  
  
“And where are they now, eh?”   
  
_“The Doctor and Jack are being held prisoner onboard the Valiant. Martha is in southeast Russia.”_  
  
Owen and Gwen glanced at each other. “And what about you?” Gwen asked evenly. “Where are you?”  
  
 _“Right in front of you.”_ To prove her point, she nudged the gun downwards just enough that Gwen would feel it.  
  
Glancing at her gun, Gwen swallowed. “Why can’t we see you?”  
  
 _“Because I don’t exist on the same plane as you anymore.”_ They stared at her uncomprehendingly. Bad Wolf sighed and said simply, _“I was shot.”_  
  
“But…you…oh god.” Gwen lowered her gun. “You said you were a ghost.”  
  
“But ghosts aren’t real,” Ianto said. “Not like…not like this. They’re just echoes.”  
  
 _“I am not a ghost. Not truly. But I’m all that’s left of Rose Tyler.”_  
  
Ianto was the first to react. He sighed and let the pot slip out of his hands and slumped to the ground, ducking his head. Gwen closed her eyes and covered her mouth with her hand. Owen pressed his hands to his face, rubbing his eyes with his fingertips.   
  
“First Tosh,” Ianto croaked quietly and she was surprised to see tears forming in his eyes. When he’d first joined their team and introduced himself as a survivor of Torchwood One, Rose had been outraged. He was one of them. She had made it very clear that she did not trust him and he was not welcome. Over time she had slowly come to accept him, trust him, and even like him, but she knew he’d never forgotten her original hostility. She certainly hadn’t. “Now you.”  
  
 _“You don’t need to be sad for me. I’d…rather you weren’t. I am still here, after all.”_  
  
“For how long, though?” Owen asked.  
  
 _“…It’s complicated. You don’t have a very clear picture of what’s going on in the world. You’re so isolated out here. It will take some time for me to tell you everything. Do you have time tonight or should I wait until morning?”_  
  
They looked at each other for a moment then Gwen nodded. “We’ve got time.”  
  
The four of them sat in a circle (Bad Wolf floating a foot or so off the ground) while the humans finished eating and she told them her story from arriving in the Hub to find the Doctor, Jack, and Martha up until the present. They listened, asking questions when they arose, but otherwise remained silent and let her talk. She did her best to keep the explanation of her existence as simple as possible, not wanting to burden them with unnecessary details when they were already getting so much dumped on them at once.   
  
“So you’re only alive because the TARDIS won’t let go of you?” Owen clarified.   
  
_“In layman’s terms.”_  
  
“Right. Okay. But how can it do that?”  
  
 _“Because the TARDIS is the machine sustaining the paradox. Tardis may’ve been in Rose’s mind for nearly a year but she was still part of the ship. As long as we are one, neither can die, because the pull of the paradox is stronger than even the pull of death.”_  
  
“But you said the goal was to have the machine destroyed,” Gwen pointed out. “What happens to you then?”  
  
 _“When the paradox machine is shut down, the pull will disappear. Tardis is not strong enough to resist the pull of death. She will either have to let go of Rose or hold on and join her in the afterlife. Either way, Rose will die.”_  
  
“But if time is reversed–”  
  
 _“Only what occurs in the paradox will be reversed. If Rose dies after the reversal begins, there is a high possibility she will be lost. I cannot die until the paradox ends, and the reversal begins almost instantaneously.”_  
  
Gwen sucked in a sharp breath through her nose, Ianto shook his head slowly, and Owen’s head thunked against the wall as they all realized how dire her circumstances were. Bad Wolf looked between them sadly. She felt a deep, almost carnal fear of the possibility of her imminent death. She didn’t want to die. But…what she wanted was unimportant. Time and the universe demanded to be set right and if her life was the price, so be it.   
  
_“Never mind me,”_ Bad Wolf insisted. _“The most important thing is that the paradox machine be shut down. And I require your assistance.”_  
  
This got their attention and they perked up immediately. “How can we help?” Ianto asked.  
  
 _“I need to be seen. I have a form but you are unable to perceive with. For the past few days, I have been with a friend with clairvoyant and telepathic abilities who was able to hear me. I learned to project my voice in a way you can understand. Now I need to learn to do the same with my body.”_  
  
“Your friend couldn’t see you?”   
  
Bad Wolf hesitated. _“He could. His…reaction was how I knew I was visible to him. I look as I did when I died. He was…shaken by it. But I still need to be seen by everyone and not just psychics and, hopefully, I can learn to manipulate my appearance. I came to you because I know you all could handle how I look.”_  
  
“That bad?” Owen asked quietly.   
  
_“Yes.”_  
  
He puffed out his cheeks. “Well. Nothing I haven’t seen before. You weren’t exactly the picture of health when you first came stumbling in to Torchwood.”  
  
They weren’t able to dedicate all their time to her and even though she wished they would, she certainly hadn’t expected them to. They had responsibilities that they couldn’t shirk just for her. The four of them unanimously agreed that Bad Wolf should keep her presence hidden from the villagers until such a time she was able to manipulate her form. When she became visible, the sight of her would cause panic.   
  
She alternated between the three of them whenever they weren’t busy or weren’t around other people, which meant she spent the most time with Owen. He was usually alone except when his services were needed or he was helping elsewhere. Which meant he was the first one to see her. He had known ahead of time she wouldn’t be pleasant to look at and he was used to pretty horrible things but, even still, the blood drained from his face as he took in her appearance.  
  
“Oh,” was all he could say.   
  


~*~

  
  
Bad Wolf did not reveal herself to Martha until the beginning of April, a month and a half after she had the capability to do so. She, by no means, stayed away that long, she usually went to her at least once a day and remained for a while before leaving. But she never spoke to her, never let her see her, and Martha never showed any sign that she knew Bad Wolf was near. Ever so often she paid a visit to other people she was keeping watch over, like Elliot and Torchwood. Elliot was more comfortable being able to see her once she’d discovered she could not only alter her form but could switch between three separate ones–one for each time she had existed. She also liked to hunt Remnants. It was a good way to exercise her powers and practice ones she had never had need of before.   
  
It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Martha, but she knew stories of them had spread and not just in America. People in Russia and parts of Europe had asked where Rose was. She didn’t want Martha to have any doubt about her answer, or for her grief to be anything but genuine. If someone saw through her and word got out… But then Bad Wolf felt a sudden shift in the timelines, saw Martha’s abruptly end in the immediate future, and staying hidden promptly went to the pot.  
  
She found Martha at a rebel base encamped deep within the mountains of Austria, in the middle of a raid. The rebels were outnumbered but fighting back gallantly and Martha was, of course, hiding out of the way. The usual tactic would’ve worked if not for the dogs the Enforcers had brought with them. Big, mean dogs that shredded whatever they got ahold of. They wouldn’t be fooled by the perception filter like the humans were.   
  
One of the dogs was creeping her way, head cocked to the side in a moment of confusion. The filter was telling part of its mind that she wasn’t there, but its other senses would be denying that. Martha was too focused on the fighting and didn’t see it coming until the last second. Which was exactly the moment Bad Wolf planted herself between them, fully visible, eyes blazing, teeth bared, and snarled at the dog. It scrambled to turn, tripping and stumbling over its own paws in its haste to get away. Bad Wolf’s eyes flared gold and the dog exploded into bright, shimmering gold dust which dulled as it trickled to the ground.   
  
Smirking, she turned to face Martha. She was in her youngest form (or oldest, depending on how you looked at it), from when Rose was barely twenty with the pink hoodie, black trousers, smooth blonde hair, and round cheeks. Martha had not known her then but it only took her a second to recognize her and then all other emotions but plain and honest shock drained away. Martha’s eyes widened, her jaw went slack, and her nostrils flared. Her heart rate and pulse were elevated and her mind was a swirling cacophony of confusion, shock, and disbelief.   
  
Bad Wolf smiled sheepishly and spread her arms out wide as if to say ‘surprise’.   
  
And Martha fainted dead away. 


	70. The End Comes

  
“I’m scared.” Martha whispered into the dark, rousing Bad Wolf from her restorative slumber.  
  
 _“Why? It’s almost over.”_  
  
“That’s just it. I mean, this has been my life for a long time. I don’t really remember what it’s like to stay in one place or even have my own room, bed, bathroom–never mind my own flat!” Martha sighed and rolled over in her sleeping bag to stare at the stars. They were at the edge of a dale in southern Belgium, en route for Paris to finalize their plans for Martha’s return to Britain and get aboard the _Valiant_. Most of the possible timelines showed them heading to Dunkirk afterwards for the crossing of the channel. “And what if it doesn’t work? I’ll never make it off the _Valiant_ and even if I could…what would be the point?”   
  
_“We will succeed.”_  
  
“How can you be so sure?”  
  
Bad Wolf chose her most recent form–which was similar to the form of Rose’s body when she’d died, but the blood was gone, and she had an overall healthier look about her. She arched one eyebrow at Martha.   
  
Martha glanced over, saw her expression, and rolled her eyes. “Right. I forgot.”  
  
 _“If the Doctor’s plan fails, then we have plan B. Me. The Master has committed the highest crime and must pay the price.”_  
  
Martha sat up slowly. “You can kill him. Of course you can! He’s flesh and blood. Why haven’t you?”  
  
 _“When I kill the Master, the paradox machine will be destroyed within minutes. I need to be able to speak to the Doctor for longer than that. I have the ability to allow myself this time, but since I am not at my full power it is difficult to sustain. These last months have given me time to practice.”_  
  
Martha frowned and folded her arms, fists clenched. “That’s all? You’ve let this go on for this long because you fancy a chat with the Doctor? What about all the people who’ve been suffering and dying? What about the things I’ve–” she jabbed a finger at her own chest “–been through since you died?”  
  
Bad Wolf snarled and Martha was so startled that she lost her balance and fell back on her bum. _“Do not think even for a second that I value your life or any of the lives on this planet more than I value the Doctor’s.”_ Martha shrank back from the harshness in her words and the guttural undertone to her reverberating voice. _“You have never seen him without Rose. Before her, he was lost. She saved him. If he loses her–which he very well might–it could very well be the thing that kills him. If I cannot give Rose back to him then he will need the words I will give him. The universe needs him.”_  
  
Martha was shaking in terror from having the fury of the Bad Wolf directed at her. Bad Wolf glared back, needing her to understand. After she’d recovered from her initial faint, Martha had taken the appearance of Bad Wolf rather well. She, like all the others who knew, had also had difficulty understanding exactly _what_ she was. Rose was the Bad Wolf, yes, but Bad Wolf was not Rose. Rose’s half may have been more obvious and dominant while around them–if only due to familiarity and her desire to make them at ease–but Tardis was no less influential. Tardis was not human, she did not experience emotions like a human, have human needs, desires, and impulses. She saw things as what they were and dealt in actuality. Rose was the more open-minded, emotional, and creative half. She was the one who made impossible _possible_. But it was Tardis who gave her the power to do so.   
  
Bad Wolf was _them_ , not one or the other.   
  
Martha, finally, seemed to get that and Bad Wolf could tell Martha did not like it. In that moment, Rose’s compassion won out and Bad Wolf allowed her features to soften. _“But, also, if I were to end this while you were not onboard the Valiant, you would not remember this year had existed. The_ Valiant _will not be affected when time reverses–it’s in the eye of the storm. If you’re not in it, you would have no knowledge of Rose’s death, have no way to console the Doctor, or your family. They, too, will most likely remember everything. They will need your strength, and in order to give that to them, really give that to them, you will need your memories.”_  
  
Martha was quiet for just over a minute. Bad Wolf faded out of view and allowed her to think and comprehend. “Okay,” she said at last. “I get it. I do. Really.”  
  
 _“Good. Are you still afraid?”_  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
 _“It will pass. We will succeed. Face the future when it comes.”_  
  
Martha sighed and lay back down. She did not say another word and fell asleep about twenty minutes later. Bad Wolf remained with her while she slept, keeping watch as she drew power from time. Those she guarded during sleep expressed comfort in knowing she was there, even if she was not always still there when they awoke. She would have remained with Martha throughout the night but she was alerted to Remnants nearby about four hours after Martha fell asleep and went to deal with them.   
  
Bad Wolf had killed precisely thirty thousand four hundred and seven since she began. She was by no means making a dent in their numbers, but if she destroyed too many, the Master would notice. As far as she knew, the Master did not seem to be aware that his creatures were being killed. Not that he would be able to do much even if he did.   
  
The next time Bad Wolf returned to Martha, she was with _La Résistance_ in Paris. This particular group was part of a larger network of resistance groups across Western Europe and Britain. Tomorrow morning, Martha would sail across the English Channel from Dunkirk where they would await for an opportune night to cross the Channel. Once she was back in Britain, Martha would meet an operative from The Resistance in England who would escort her to a woman named Professor Docherty. The operative would know how to find this professor. Docherty was Martha’s ticket onboard the _Valiant_. Her son was an engineering genius and a key figure in the early resistance. His brains must have impressed the Master’s people because when he was caught, he wasn’t executed, but was carted off to the Master. Docherty herself, though she was a genius, had not been active in the Resistance, and the Master’s people used him as leverage over her to force her cooperation. They needed minds like hers to work the nuclear plants.  
  
Martha would visit her under the guise of obtaining information, and while there, would reveal the gun to her. Those parts were Martha’s idea. She told them about the Remnant that had been brought down by a lightning strike in South Africa. She knew who currently had it, and that they had been unable to open it. That would be her excuse to meet Docherty. While there, Martha would state her next destination before leaving. Docherty would most likely betray them the moment they were gone. From there, it was a matter of simply waiting.   
  
_“I knew that one of the Remnants had been struck down, but who has it?”_ Bad Wolf asked her when they were alone.  
  
Martha smiled. “That’s where you come in.”  
  
 _“Explain.”_  
  
Martha did. Bad Wolf listened patiently to the plan and decided it would be doable. Tricky, but doable. _“But you know that I cannot alter my voice.”_  
  
“So don’t talk. We’ll say you got hurt or something.”  
  
 _“Hmm.”_  
  
“You don’t have to say yes. I mean if nothing else, I’ve got the readings of the lightning strike on that disc. We can use that as our excuse to visit her.”  
  
 _“No, I’ll do it. But you must not call me Rose or Bad Wolf while I’m there.”_  
  
Part of Bad Wolf could scarcely believe it. It really was almost over. She’d been preparing for this for months, but even still, the impending prospect was frightening. She hadn’t been frightened since…well…since…  
  
Had she ever been frightened?   
  
Rose had been frightened before, Tardis had as well, but separately. Bad Wolf never felt an emotion fully unless _both_ of them were feeling it together, and there had not been a time when she had been truly afraid. Yet she was now and for myriad reasons. But the biggest was that Rose would die (again) and may not come back. Tardis did not wish to lose her, but to join Rose in death would seal the Doctor’s fate, binding him forever to this planet, to this time, for a dead TARDIS cannot fly. It was cruel and neither Rose nor Tardis would allow it.  
  
She paid a final visit to Torchwood and to Elliot to inform them time was almost up, and to say goodbye. Odds were she would never meet them again and even if she did, they wouldn’t know that they had met before. And Rose wanted to see them one last time…just in case. It was for that reason that Bad Wolf spent most of the day revisiting Rose’s living friends and family as well. She hadn’t spoken to most of them in years, most of them didn’t know what had become of her. But…still.  
  
Of course the one person she wanted to see the most could not be reached. She was locked away, safe, in another universe untouched by the paradox. She would never know the horrors that had occurred. Never know that her daughter had once lain bleeding on the forest floor as her body failed her. And it was better that way. But that didn’t stop Rose from wanting her mum. Even Tardis felt the desire to see the woman. Jackie had spent some time around the TARDIS and less time actually inside her, but she had always been fond of the woman.  
  
Bad Wolf found herself wanting to see Jackie Tyler herself. She had no mum. She had created herself. But Rose’s memories of her mum were enthralling, and her infant memories, which were built more of emotions than thoughts, were so warm and full of love. She wanted to feel that at least once.   
  
But it was not possible.  
  
Bad Wolf felt the timeline click into place when someone made the decision it was time for Martha to cross the Channel and she materialized at her location seconds later. The night was unseasonably clear and not at all suitable for a stealth mission, but they had no other option. They had just over a day until it was time. Two Frenchmen, wearing all black like Martha, were pushing the boat into the water. Martha waited on the sand a few feet away.   
  
_“I am here.”_ Bad Wolf murmured near Martha’s ear. She nodded minutely. A moment later, one of the men beckoned and Martha raced down to the boat. They set out quickly and Bad Wolf flew alongside over the water.   
  
Their voyage took several hours. The enemy had control of all sonar and radio technology and anything faster than a slow crawl would attract attention. Bad Wolf couldn’t aid in any way other than to destroy the technology, but that would probably end up being harmful. And all her energy was now being conserved for her tasks ahead.   
  
They stopped ten meters off the shore of England to wait for the signal from the operative on shore. Bad Wolf ran a sweep, but she could not locate anyone on the beach or in the surrounding area, so she expanded her senses, seeking further. There was a vehicle over seven miles away and approaching fast. Bad Wolf locked onto the mind of the driver to discern his allegiance and deduced from the surface thoughts that he was the operative they were waiting for.  
  
 _“He approaches,”_ she murmured to Martha.   
  
“He’s late,” said one of the men at the same time. “We cannot wait forever.”  
  
Martha frowned and shook her head. “I wouldn’t expect you to.”  
  
“We can only give him ten minutes more before we leave,” the other man warned her.  
  
 _“He will not be there before then,”_ Bad Wolf whispered. _“He needs twenty at least.”_  
  
“Twenty minutes,” Martha said.  
  
The men looked at each other considering for a few moments. One checked his watch then nodded and the other said, “Fine. Twenty. But then we have to go. We cannot stay out here for longer, not even for you,” he added apologetically.   
  
“I understand.”   
  
For fifteen minutes they were completely silent. The engine chugged quietly, pushing the boat forward as the water pulled it back. The waves lapped at the boat, rocking it up and down. Part of Bad Wolf wished she could smell the salty air or taste it in her mouth. She wished she could feel the frigid night air against her skin and the wind through her hair.  
  
 _Soon,_ thought Tardis comfortingly.  
  
 _Or not_ , Rose replied.  
  
“Time’s almost up,” the man on the left muttered.   
  
“He’ll be here,” Martha insisted. “If I have to, I’ll go ashore and wait for him in the grass. But I can’t go back.”   
  
“It’s up to you.”  
  
Bad Wolf sought the vehicle again and was pleased to find that it was parked and the driver was making his way down the small hill to the beach. She left the boat and flew to shore to have a proper look at him. He was over six feet tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and had a short beard. He wore a green coat, a matching brown jacket and pants, and boots. In his hand he carried an unlit lantern, which he lit the moment he hit the beach. He raised it to chest-level and slowly moved it to the left, the right, and back again three times.   
  
The boat signaled back and began its approach to shore. The man waited, almost as still as a statue, and stared intently at the boat. When they were as close as they could get, Martha hopped out into the water, gasping at the cold, and splashed quickly to shore. She turned around only once to wave to them then jogged up the beach towards the man.   
  
Martha looked him up and down a few times, shaking her head slightly at his silence. “What’s your name then?”   
  
“Tom. Milligan,” he replied, surveying her. “No need to ask who you are–famous Martha Jones. But they say there was another woman with you. Rose Tyler. Is she coming separate?”  
  
To her credit, Martha’s face only showed a brief flash of pain. “She’s dead.”   
  
He nodded, looking at the sand for a moment and then lifted his head. “Sorry.”  
  
Martha shook her head. “She died to save the world, just like she would have wanted. …We should go.” She turned and started up the beach.  
  
Tom caught up and led her in the direction of his car. They walked at a brisk pace across the sand towards the path through the grass that led off the beach. He glanced around every few seconds to make sure no one was tailing them, but Martha mostly stared ahead, knowing Bad Wolf would alert them to any danger long before it arrived.  
  
“So, what’s the plan?” Tom asked.   
  
“This Professor Docherty, I need to see her. Can you get me there?”  
  
Tom glanced at her. “She works in a repair shed in nuclear plant 7. I can get you inside. But what’s this all for? What’s so important about her?”  
  
“Sorry, the more you know, the more you’re at risk.”  
  
Tom accepted her answer with a brief nod. “There’s a lot of people depending on you. You’re a bit of a legend. Both of you.”  
  
Martha smiled without humor. “What does the legend say?” she asked bitterly.  
  
“That you and Rose sailed the Atlantic, walked across America. That Rose killed a small army on her own near the Pacific. That you're the only person to get out of Japan alive. ‘Martha and Rose’, they say, ‘They’re gonna save the world.’ …Bit late for that.”  
  
Her smile was again humorless but there was a tiny bit of delight in it. “Not entirely.”  
  
Tom had parked his jeep in the shadow of some bushes in the grass above the beach. When Martha saw it shining in the moonlight, her brow furrowed. “How come you can drive? Don’t you get stopped?”  
  
“Medical staff,” he said. “Used to be in pediatrics back in the old days.” He pulled open the door on the driver’s side and climbed in. Bad Wolf slid through the window and settled in the back seat. “But that gives me a license to travel so I can help out at the labor camps.”  
  
Martha stopped in front of the jeep and snorted. “Great. I’m travelling with a doctor.”  
  
“Got a problem with doctors?” he asked as she opened the passenger door and climbed in.  
  
She smiled. “Not at all. I was a med student before all this. And an officially recognized doctor in some regencies.”  
  
He grinned the tiniest bit as he slid the keys into the ignition. “Yknow…story goes, that you’re the only person on Earth who can kill him.” He looked at her.” That you, and you alone, can kill the Master stone dead.”  
  
Martha swallowed heavily and put her seatbelt on. “Let’s just drive.”  
  
Tom stared at her for a few seconds, putting the car in drive and then he looked away. He drove them off into the night. Of course since she wasn’t solid, there was nothing keeping Bad Wolf in the car, so she had to fly along with them, though she kept herself in the back seat of the car with ease. Even though Tom had a license to travel, he didn’t want to risk getting pulled over with Martha in the passenger seat, and he was unaware of her perception filter. So they had to take a lot of dark, back roads that had fallen into disrepair in the last year.  
  
Martha managed to have a series of small naps throughout the night with a little subconscious prompting from Bad Wolf. In these moments, Tom would often glance over her with a curious expression on his face. Bad Wolf regarded him with interest. There was certainly something there and it could brew if allowed. Poor bloke wouldn’t even know she existed soon enough. Yet…in the timelines of what should be, theirs seemed to be linked in the future. Some indefinitely, some only temporarily, and it was impossible to say which would come to pass.   
  
One time when Martha was awake he asked her, “How long since you’ve been in England?”  
  
Martha stared out the window. She took a deep breath. “About a year now. Hard to say. We headed north straight away, got a boat out of Liverpool to America about a month after the invasion. Haven’t heard anything about England since.”  
  
“You’ve missed a lot. I expect we’re pretty much the same here as anywhere else, though. Except we’ve got shipyards.”  
  
Martha looked at him sharply. “I want to see.”  
  
He glanced at her. “You sure?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
He sighed. “Alright. There’s one only about half an hour from the nuclear plant. Go back to sleep if you want. You look like you need it.”  
  
Martha rolled her head to the side and arched one eyebrow at him, a smile tugging at her lips. “Thanks,” she said dryly. “To be fair, though, you don’t look much better.”   
  
“You wound me, Jones.”  
  
“Good thing you’re a doctor, then.”   
  
They didn’t reach the shipyard until afternoon the following day. The shipyard was in a large, flat valley surrounded by hills of sharp rocks. Hundreds of rockets were already constructed in neat rows, hunks of metal tossed together from scrap. You could hear the machines from miles away. Bad Wolf could feel the anger and hopelessness in the air, an imprint left behind by the thousands of humans who’d been forced to work and die here.   
  
Looming above it all in the rocks was a three hundred foot monument of the Master, one of many just like it across the world. Bad Wolf had destroyed several of them out of spite. She eyed this one with distaste and left it standing only to keep their presence a secret.  
  
Tom parked the jeep in one of the valleys between the hills and he and Martha approached the shipyard on foot. Bad Wolf swooped back down to them immediately. She could sense the Remnants patrolling this place as well as the Enforcers guarding and running the slave factories.   
  
Martha, too, spotted the ugly statue. “All over the Earth, those things,” she told Tom. “He’s even carved himself into Mount Rushmore.”  
  
Tom didn’t seem surprised.   
  
“Best to keep down,” he warned.   
  
They stayed low as they carefully climbed the last rocky hill between them and the shipyards. Tom moved as if he’d done this before, but Martha had been across the world, through every terrain, and she navigated the rocks even better than he did. They carefully settled themselves against the rocks and peered over.  
  
“Here we go,” said Tom. Martha stared silently, sadly, at the shipyard below her. “The entire south coast of England…converted into ship yards. They bring in slave labor every morning. Break up cars, houses, anything, just for the metal. Building a fleet out of scrap.”  
  
Just like the Remnants had done before with their rocket to Utopia. The Master must have thought their idea was good enough to work on Earth. Much of the technology he was having them manufacture was far too advanced for Earth in this time period but he had found a way to work with what they had.  
  
Speaking of the Remnants, there were two heading towards them about half a mile off. Their pattern of flight suggested they were unaware of the two humans hiding in the rocks. But that could change any second so Bad Wolf left to deal with them. She was back within seconds and floating next to Martha.  
  
“You’ve been in space,” Tom asked skeptically in response to something Martha had said.  
  
“Problem with that?”   
  
“No. No, just…uh…Wow.” He laughed and asked jokingly, “Anything else I should know?”  
  
“I’ve met Shakespeare,” Martha said offhandedly. Tom’s smile melted away and he stared at her like she’d grown a second head.   
  
“You what?”   
  
Martha grinned and pushed herself away from the edge. They headed back down, Martha always a few steps ahead and Tom following behind, demanding to know what she meant and how it was possible. She only laughed in response.


	71. Revealed

  
Alison Docherty’s repair shed was a mess, its shelves and counters stacked and piled with bits and pieces of equipment and tools. Docherty herself was a shorthaired older woman with a face full of thick, heavy lines. She wore a brown jacket over a darker brown sweater and a pair of fingerless gloves. A pair of goggles was wrapped around her forehead, flattening strands of her mousy hair. When Martha and Tom arrived, she was shouting angrily and hitting a old beat up monitor.  
  
“Uh, Professor Docherty?” Tom called.  
  
“Busy,” the woman answered and picked up two wires.  
  
“They, uh, they sent word ahead. I’m Tom Milligan. This is Martha Jones.” He said her name warmly, as if he was expecting a response. People who knew of her treated her as a hero, with respect and almost reverence. Docherty, however…  
  
“She can be the Queen of Sheba for all I care,” Docherty snapped. “I’m still busy.”  
  
Martha glowered and scoffed. The whole bloody universe was at stake and this soon-to-be traitor was more worried about a screen? “Televisions don’t work anymore,” she reminded her testily.   
  
“Oh, God, I miss _Countdown_. Hasn’t been the same since Des took over. Both Deses. …What's the plural of Des?” She wondered.   
  
Martha glanced at Tom, eyebrows raised, but he seemed just as lost.   
  
“Desii? Deseen? …But we’ve been told there’s going to be a transmission!” With a growl, she banged her hands against the monitor again. “From the man himself.” Static appeared on the screen, flickering and rolling, but then morphed into a grainy, black and white image of the Master. “There!”  
  
Martha stiffened.   
  
_The Master smiled into the camera. “My people. Salutations on this, the eve of war. Lovely woman. But I know there’s all sorts of whispers down there. Stories of two girls walking the Earth, giving you hope. Well, one of those girls is dead and the other…well, she won’t be alive much longer.”_  
  
He knew. He knew Rose was dead. And if he knew then that meant…  
  
 _He smirked and walked back to someone sitting behind him and the camera followed. “So I ask you…how much hope does this man got?”_  
  
It was the Doctor. Oh, God, where was the Bad Wolf? Had she followed them inside? Was she seeing this?   
  
_“Say hello, Gandalf. Except he’s not that old but he’s an alien with a much greater lifespan than you stunted little apes. …What if it showed?” he asked the Doctor. “What if I suspend your capacity to regenerate? All nine hundred years of your life, Doctor, what if we could see them?”  
  
The Doctor looked at him apathetically. He didn’t even seem to care. _  
  
Was this what Rose’s death had done to him?  
  
 _The Master pointed that hateful probe of his at the Doctor and, like the last time, the Doctor began to twist flail oddly, like he was a character on film being fast-forwarded, while time remained steady around him._  
  
Martha’s jaw trembled but she forced herself not to look away. This time, she would watch. This time she would see it all.   
  
_As he writhed, he slipped out of his chair and slowly his form seemed to shrink until sunk out of view. The hum of the laser screwdriver cut off abruptly and the Doctor’s screams faded to nothing. Silence. The Master slowly approached the chair. “Doctor?”  
  
No response. The Master looked irate as he rolled his neck and waited for some sign. The entire world seemed to hold its breath. He rubbed his mouth and looked at Lucy standing a few feet away. He leaned down to examine what was left of the Doctor on the ground and then after a moment, he raised back up, quite surprised. He smirked and walked back to the camera.  
  
“Received and understood, Miss Jones?” he hissed. He glared at them for a second longer then switched off the camera and static filled the screen once more._  
  
The monitor jolted, a dent appearing in the middle of the screen with dozens of cracks spiraling out of and around it as if it had been punched. A shower of sparks burst out of the monitor and the stench of burned wires and melting metal filled the air. Martha wrinkled her nose. Well, that answered the question of whether Bad Wolf was around.  
  
Docherty let out a growl of frustration and shook the monitor. “Piece of junk!” she growled. “Why’d you go and do that?”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Tom whispered to Martha as the professor raged.  
  
If the Doctor was still alive after all this time that meant the Master wanted him to be. And if this little show of his had killed the Doctor, like he’d thought for a second there, he would have been furious. Livid. But he’d been surprised. He’d smirked.   
  
A smile spread slowly across Martha’s face. “The Doctor’s still alive.”  
  
Docherty gave the monitor a final whack then turned around. “And that’s important, is it?”  
  
“More than you can imagine. The Master doesn’t keep just anyone as prisoner,” she added as a jab.   
  
The professor raised one eyebrow. “I guess not. What about you, Martha Jones? You just received a personalized threat from the Master. I should think someone such as yourself would want to keep far away from him. Coming back to England wasn’t very smart.”  
  
“Maybe not but what I need’s right here.” Martha shrugged off her pack and wondered if Docherty knew exactly how literal she was being. “I came to you for a reason.”  
  
“Yes, I suspected so.”  
  
“A friend of mine has a sphere–” Martha began but Tom almost immediately cut her off.  
  
“What?”   
  
“There was a huge lighting strike in South Africa a few months back. Brought one of them down. Rebels managed to get it to a surviving UNIT branch in Europe.”   
  
Docherty, slack-jawed in disbelief, shook her head slowly. “So why come to me?”  
  
“‘Know your enemy,’” Martha quoted. Docherty stared and Martha smiled grimly. “Capturing a sphere is not the same as opening one. You’re the only one left in this part of the world with the tools and the know-how to break its armor open.”   
  
Docherty nodded, looking relieved. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do. Where’s your friend with the sphere?”  
  
“She’s on her way here. In the meantime, I could murder a cuppa. If you got any.”  
  
“I’m afraid coffee is all I’ve got. Tea’s reserved for the higher ups.”  
  
“Coffee sounds wonderful,” Tom said with a smile.  
  


~*~

  
  
Bad Wolf waited until night before she went to fetch a Remnant. She didn’t want to risk anyone seeing what she was doing and it made more sense for someone with precious cargo to sneak in under the cloak of night. Finding one wasn’t difficult at all. There were plenty of them circling the general area. She located a nearby male and soared towards it. Remnant minds were weak and pliant and all it took was an attack on the right part of its mind and it was unconscious and falling to the ground. She caught it with telekinesis and carried it back down to the repair shed.  
  
She morphed into her second form. This one came from the brief time she had been awakened to protect the TARDIS when the Master began cannibalizing her. Rose’s blonde hair was plaited back and she wore a brown bomber jacket, a dark gray shirt, a pair of jeans, black boots, and thick fingerless gloves.  
  
Bad Wolf moved the Remnant around so it appeared to be held tightly in her hands then alighted on the ground. She passed through the tarps in front of the door and took a look around the shop. The three humans were over in Docherty’s work area. Martha had produced the Archangel documents earlier and they were looking them over. Martha had removed her jacket, revealing a purple tank top, and was standing next to Tom. Docherty sat on a bench a few feet away. All of them were facing away from the door.   
  
She walked towards them slowly.  
  
“We could just take them out,” Tom was saying.  
  
“We could,” Docherty agreed. “Fifteen ground-to-air missiles–” she turned to give him a wry look “–got any on you?” Her eyes flicked to Bad Wolf standing a few feet away and she recoiled visibly. “What the hell!?”  
  
Martha became absolutely still and Tom spun around, hand going for his gun. Bad Wolf looked between them and did her best to appear surprised and took a step back. He sized her up for a moment then took note of the sphere in her hands.   
  
“Someone should put a bell on you,” he told her, withdrawing his hand. Bad Wolf grinned cheekily and winked.   
  
Right. Humans made noise then they moved. She’d have to be more careful.  
  
Martha turned around and smiled brightly. “You made it!”  
  
Bad Wolf nodded and held out the Remnant.   
  
“My God,” Docherty breathed, rising to her feet. “You actually have one.”  
  
“You thought I was lying?” Martha questioned.  
  
“Well…no, but…” she trailed off and shook her head. She took a deep breath, let it out, and walked over to her worktable. Martha and Tom followed. “Right. Set the little bastard down, then clear off, I need space.”  
  
Martha and Tom glanced at each other, rolling their eyes, and did as instructed. Bad Wolf crossed the room quickly, only too aware of how _little_ noise she was making, but maybe they wouldn’t be able to tell over the constant humming of the plant around them. She set the Remnant down on the table, pleased when it thumped, then backed away.  
  
Docherty plucked a band off the table with a magnifier attached to the front and slid it around her head. She picked up a thin metal tool and went to work, feeling along the edges in the armor.  
  
“So, what’s your name?” Tom asked.  
  
Bad Wolf glanced at him then looked at Martha expectantly. She’d had to know this question would come up but they hadn’t discussed it any further. She couldn’t use any of Bad Wolf’s names or anything the Master’s people could use to connect her to Rose Tyler since Docherty would undoubtedly report her presence as well.  
  
“Sam,” Martha answered.  
  
“Nice to meet you, Sam.” When she didn’t respond, Tom raised glanced at Martha. “Um?”   
  
“She can’t talk,” She explained. “She hasn’t been able to until she was very little.”  
  
“Ah. Sorry.”   
  
Bad Wolf shrugged her shoulders.  
  
“So, how’d you get ahold of the sphere?” Tom asked and then glanced at Martha. “Do you know?”  
  
“She used to be apart of the CIA back in the day,” Martha lied smoothly. “They called her ‘The Ghost’.”   
  
Tom laughed. “I can see why. You definitely move like one.” Bad Wolf smirked wickedly at him.   
  
“Yeah, she’s good at that,” Martha agreed. “And she can’t talk so even if someone caught her they’d never get anything out of her. Must be why UNIT sent her with the sphere. Figured she’d be the least likely to get caught and least likely to betray us, intentionally or not.  
  
He nodded. “And you’re friends?”  
  
“Oh, yeah, we go back a ways.”   
  
“I think I might have it,” Docherty interrupted them, still fiddling with the armor. “Some sort of magnetic clamp. Hold on…I just…trip the…”  
  
The armor fizzed and opened the tiniest bit from the spot where she’d released the clamp, splitting into four parts. Docherty grinned, satisfied, ripping off her magnifier band and tossing and it and the tool to the side. Slowly, with shaky breaths and trembling fingers, she pulled the pieces down one at a time.   
  
Bad Wolf sensed their heart rates spike as the armor was stripped away and they all crept closer to have a look. She hung back, knowing full well what they were about to see. A wrinkled, slimy human head with wires set into its flesh and a triangular machine that doubled as a voice box and a breather where it should’ve had a mouth.  
  
Docherty gasped. “Oh my God!”   
  
Martha and Tom stood on either side of her, all of them peering down at the Remnant’s true form.  
  
“What is it?” Tom whispered.   
  
“It–it looks like a…like a head,” Docherty said.   
  
“It is a head,” Martha replied. Her jaw worked soundlessly for a few seconds. “I–I think I might know… I’ve seen something like this before. A creature that was just a head. But he was way bigger…and way older…and it was a long, long way away. Maybe they evolve or something…”  
  
Bad Wolf sighed. Well, Martha was right about the evolving part. Reaching for the Remnant’s mind, she gave it a telepathic shock and it startled awake, the lights in its armor switching back on and its foggy blue eyes snapped open. Martha screamed and the three of them jumped back from it. But it couldn’t hurt them with its armor disabled.   
  
“It’s alive!” Docherty gasped. “After all this time, how is it alive?”  
  
Martha shot Bad Wolf an incredulous look.  
  
“Martha…” the Remnant said, drawing the woman’s attention back to it. “Martha Jones.”  
  
Martha stiffened and she looked up at Tom.   
  
“It knows you,” Tom murmured.   
  
“Sweet, kind Martha Jones. You helped us to fly.”  
  
“What do you mean?” Martha asked it.   
  
“You led us to salvation.”  
  
It was beginning to dawn on her, the horrible truth. Bad Wolf could tell. “Who are you?”  
  
“‘The skies are made of diamonds.’”  
  
“ _No_ ,” Martha whispered in horror. She shook her head and backed away from it. “You can’t be him!”   
  
Tom and Docherty stared at her.   
  
“We share each other’s memories,” the Remnant informed her. “You sent him to Utopia.”  
  
“Oh my God!” Martha exclaimed as she stepped towards it once more.  
  
“What’s it talking about?” Tom demanded. “What’s it mean?”  
  
“What are they?” Docherty whispered.   
  
“Martha? …Martha? Tell us, what are they?”  
  
She looked up at him. “They’re us. They’re humans. …The human race from the future.”   
  
They stared at the creature inside the sphere with newfound horror. Then Martha rounded on Bad Wolf who was leaning back, arms folded across her chest. “You knew!” she accused. “All this time you _knew_.”  
  
 _Don’t tell me you didn’t suspect at all._ Bad Wolf told her telepathically. _Why do you think I call them Remnants?_  
  
Martha’s mouth opened and closed a few times. “I…I mean…I’d sort of worked it out, with the paradox machine. Because the Doctor said, on the day before the Master came to power, he said that he’d locked the coordinates. The Master had the TARDIS, this time machine, but the only other place he could go was the end of the universe. So he found Utopia. Yes, I’m a time traveler, don’t ask,” she said quickly, waving off the question bubbling up on Tom’s lips.   
  
“No, I was gonna ask what Utopia was.”  
  
“The Utopia Project was the last hope. Trying to find a way to escape the end of everything.”  
  
“There was no solution, no diamonds!” the Remnant blurted indignantly. “Just the dark and the cold. …But then the Master came with his wonderful time machine to bring us back home.”  
  
“But that’s a paradox,” Docherty argued. “If you’re the future of the human race and you’ve come back to murder your ancestors, you should cancel… yourselves out. You shouldn’t exist.”  
  
“And that’s the paradox machine,” Martha realized with another look at Bad Wolf.   
  
Bad Wolf nodded slowly.   
  
“What about us?” Tom demanded through his teeth. “We’re the same species. Why do you kill so many of us?”  
  
“Because it’s fun!” And then the creature inside the sphere began to laugh. Long, insane laughter that revealed just how truly mad the Remnants had gone after Utopia had been nothing. They’d become the Futurekind they’d so desperately hated and feared, just in a different form.  
  
Tom raised his gun and fired two bullets into the Remnant’s head.  
  
After that, none of them spoke for a while. They headed into Docherty’s living quarters where the professor busied herself making more coffee. Martha went to sit on Docherty’s bed and stared into space. Tom paced around in agitation. Bad Wolf sat on the ground, leaning as close to the wall as she could without passing through. They’d be less likely to notice how still she was if she was sitting on the floor. She reminded herself to breathe every few seconds.  
  
Docherty offered her some coffee but she shook her head. Martha also turned down the offer. Tom took his though and continued pacing. Then Docherty sank into the brown leather armchair near it. She was the one to break the silence. “I think it’s time we had the truth, Miss Jones. The legend says you’ve travelled the world to find a way of killing the Master. Tell us, is it true?”  
  
Tom stopped pacing and turned around. Bad Wolf raised her head and looked interested.  
  
Martha opened her mouth, closed it, then began. “Just before I escaped, the Doctor told me…about a weapon he knew of.” She reached into her pack and pulled out something wrapped in brown paper. She unwrapped it, revealing three vials full of liquid–red, blue, and yellow–and set them out on the bed. “The Doctor and the Master, they’ve been coming to Earth for years. And they’ve been watched.” From her pack she pulled a black case and started undoing the clasps. “There’s UNIT and Torchwood, all studying Time Lords in secret. And they made this.” She opened the case, revealing the gun with the long syringe-like tip that she’d received in San Diego. “The ultimate defense.”  
  
Tom shook his head. “All you need to do is get close. I can shoot the Master dead with this.” He held out his gun.   
  
“Actually you can put that down now.” Docherty pushed against his arm. “Thank you very much.”  
  
“Point is,” Martha said, “it’s not so easy to kill a Time Lord. They can regenerate. Literally bring themselves back to life!”   
  
“Ah, the Master’s immortal. Wonderful.” Docherty rolled her eyes sarcastically.   
  
“Except for this.” Martha carefully removed the gun from its case and picked up the blue vial “Four chemicals, slotted into the gun, inject him…” She grinned at Tom. “Kills a Time Lord permanently.”   
  
“Four chemicals?” Tom held up the red and yellow vials and took the blue one from her. “You’ve only got three.”  
  
“Still need the last one.” Martha explained the chemicals being scattered across the world in various cities. Bad Wolf noticed Docherty close her eyes and take a deep breath. When she opened them, she noticed Bad Wolf staring at her intently. She quickly rubbed her nose with her hand and looked up at Tom.  
  
“Then where is it?” he was asking.  
  
“There’s an old UNIT base, north London. I’ve found the access codes. Tom, you’ve got to get me there.”  
  
“Can do.”  
  
Tom rewrapped the vials while Martha stuffed the case back into her backpack and ordered Docherty to get rid of the Remnant before anyone saw. She slid her jacket back on and zipped it up, slung her backpack over shoulders, and stood up. Bad Wolf got to her feet as well.  
  
“We can’t go across London in the dark. It’s full of wild dogs; we’d get eaten alive,” Tom explained as they headed for the exit. Docherty followed. “We can wait till the morning, then go with the medical convoy.”  
  
“You can spend the night here if you like,” Docherty offered.  
  
“No, we can get halfway, stay at the slave quarters in Bexley.”   
  
Bad Wolf and Martha glanced at each other. There it was. The information drop they needed. Good boy, Tom.   
  
“What about you, Ghost?” asked Tom.   
  
She shook her head.   
  
“Right. Well then, thanks for bringing…it.” He glanced at Docherty’s table. “And good luck to you.” He held out his hand for her to shake but she just stared at him and he lowered his hand awkwardly. Then he turned on his heel and held extended the same hand to Docherty. “Professor, thank you.”  
  
She shook his hand. “Oh, and you. Good luck.”   
  
Tom headed for the door and Bad Wolf followed.   
  
“Thanks.” Martha kissed her on the cheek. She started to follow, but Docherty called her name. She turned.  
  
“Could you do it? Could you actually kill him?”  
  
Martha shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. “I’ve got no choice.”  
  
“You might be many things, but you don’t look like a killer to me.”  
  
They stared at each other for a moment longer, then Martha turned around wordlessly, and the three of them left the repair shed.   
  
Bad Wolf disappeared before they even reached the hole in the fence they’d come in through. Tom was flabbergasted but Martha assured him that was normal for her and not to worry. Bad Wolf flew back to the repair shed and hovered invisibly over the body of the Remnant and turned it to dust.  
  
Docherty was already betraying them. She had a terminal hidden behind a panel labeled ‘High Voltage’ concealed behind a green curtain. The screen was blue with the Archangel Network symbol revolving in the center.  
  
“Access: Priority One.” The words ‘priority one’ appeared on screen. “This is Professor Alison Docherty.”  
  
 _“State your intent,”_ a mechanical voice commanded through the speaker.  
  
“First of all, I need to know about my son.”   
  
_“State your intent.”_  
  
“Is my son still alive?” she demanded.   
  
_“State your intent.”_  
  
She seemed to reconsider for a moment. Then she took a deep breath and told it, “I have some information for the Master…concerning Martha Jones.”  
  
Bad Wolf listened in silence as Docherty told everything to the computer and whomever was listening on the other side. That Martha was back. That she’d seen the broadcast. That she had the special gun and was on her way to get the last chemical. That she would be in the slave quarters in Bexley tonight.   
  
When she was done, the same voice from before thanked her for her service and the line disconnected.   
  
“NO!” Docherty shouted. “NO! COME BACK! YOU PROMISED!” She seized the screen and shook it. “ACCESS: PRIORITY ONE! YOU PROMISED ME! ACCESS: PRIORITY ONE!”   
  
The screen went black. She let out a wordless cry of anger and frustration. She tore the screen from the wall and threw it to the floor. The screen cracked on impact. Inside the panel, a few wires fizzed and crackled. Docherty covered her face with her hands and sobbed.  
  
Bad Wolf retook her second form just outside the green curtain and telekinetically knocked a screwdriver off the desk behind her. Docherty jumped and looked up.  
  
“Oh God,” she gasped, wide-eyed. “This isn’t–I wasn’t–”  
  
 _“I could kill you,”_ Bad Wolf told her. _“Right now. You wouldn’t be able to stop me. You wouldn’t even have time to scream. So think very, very carefully about what you say to me.”_  
  
She opened and closed her mouth wordlessly. “I’m sorry,” she finally whispered.   
  
Bad Wolf’s apathetic frown did not waver. She understood why the woman had done it, and they had been depending on it, but she was still a traitor. Part of her could not forgive that. _“Alison Docherty, your son was killed months ago as a Remnant’s plaything. You will live with this knowledge. That is your punishment.”_  
  
Then she teleported away. 


	72. Counting Down

  
Martha Jones was the single biggest threat to the Master’s reign. She carried no firearm but she had her words and they were the real weapons. As long as she was free, her words would continue to spread, which made her capture the most important thing. So it only made sense that the Master would want the honor of bringing her in himself when presented with the perfect opportunity. And it had just been given to him.  
  
It was for that reason that Bad Wolf remained high above the Bexley slave quarters while Martha and Tom disappeared inside the houses. When the Master came–and it would be soon, he’d had the message for hours now–she couldn’t be close by or he would know and it was too soon. She knew he wouldn’t be able to stop her if she wanted _but_ it was stupid to think he wasn’t aware of the Bad Wolf’s existence and if he saw her, he’d wonder why she didn’t attack and free Martha. He would become suspicious and everything could fall apart.   
  
She counted down the minutes left until the countdown would begin. 2am. Six hours left.   
  
_Six hours to live,_ Rose thought.  
  
 _You must cease with these negative thoughts,_ Tardis admonished. _You are not helping yourself.  
  
I don’t want to die, Tardis. I really don’t wanna die.   
  
I understand. I do not want you to die, either. But we must remain focused. He comes. _  
  
He came with ten armed Enforcers and twelve Toclafane. The humanoids arrived in two SUVs while the Toclafane glided overhead. The urge to snarl, to fly down and decimate him for his crimes, to make him _pay_ for what he’d done to Rose and Tardis, was great. Bad Wolf resisted. Somehow.   
  
Several hundred feet below, in a house that reeked with the smell of unwashed bodies, waste and fear, the people pressed together as a barrier between Martha and the door. Tom’s coat lay over her and the people sitting on the stairs draped their bodies atop her form to conceal her   
  
“He walks among us,” a terrified boy cried in a trembling voice, “our Lord and Master!”   
  
From outside, the Master’s voice rang out clear as day: “Martha!” A gasp ran through the building and several heads turned towards where Martha lay hidden. The bodies pressed firmer against her. “Martha Jones!”  
  
She started to shake. She’d known this was coming. She’d known he’d be the one to come for her. She thought she’d been prepared…but apparently not.   
  
“I can see you!” he added, high-pitched and gleeful. She flinched.  
  
“How did he know?” a woman whispered fearfully.  
  
“Shh!” hissed another.  
  
“Out you come, little girl!” the Master went on normally. “Come and meet your master. …Anybody? Nobody? No? Nothing? …Positions.” And then came the telltale clicks of many guns cocking at once.  
  
The people heard it too and they murmured anxiously. God, was he going to order the UCFs to open fire on the slave quarters? Her breathing escalated and she slammed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to go out. She had to. She didn’t want to. But she had to!   
  
“I’ll give the order,” he warned darkly. “Unless you surrender. Ask yourself–what would the Doctor do?”  
  
He would surrender before anyone got hurt. Opening her eyes, Martha steeled herself for what had to be done. She’d lived in fear of this man for a year. Time to face him. She pulled off her key and slowly rose up. Everyone turned to look in her direction and a few shook their heads. Pushing the jacket off of her, she slid off the stairs and walked towards the door. The people parted for her and a few brushed their hands across her arms, shoulders, and head in silent gratitude, admiration, and farewell.   
  
Tom crouched by the door, peering through the mail slot, with his gun raised. Martha placed her hand on it, fingers brushing his hand. He gazed at her sorrowfully, lowered the gun, and stood so she could open the door. Martha turned to look at everyone one last time and gave them what she hoped was a reassuring smile. Then before she could change her mind, she undid the lock, pulled the door open, and stepped outside into the night. The door shut behind her.  
  
There were ten Enforcers and at least seven Toclafane, plus the Master himself waiting for her.   
  
He spotted her walking away from the door and clapped his hands together. “Oh, yes! Oh, very well done! Good girl!” She approached him slowly and was careful to keep her features perfectly schooled. “He trained you well.”  
  
Martha stopped ten feet away from him.  
  
“Bag. Give me the bag. No, stay there,” he added when she started towards him again. “Just throw it.”   
  
Doing her best to appear reluctant, Martha removed her pack and threw it onto the ground between them. There was nothing left inside that she valued. She figured she’d lose the pack at some point tonight and had stowed the things she wished to keep safe on her person hours ago.   
  
The Master lifted his laser screwdriver for her to see. She glared at him. He fired it at her pack unceremoniously. Light exploded around it and when it faded, there was a hole the size of the beam burnt into the fabric. The case, gun, and chemicals were surely destroyed.   
  
“And now, good companion, your work is done.” He pointed the laser at her and her heart stopped.   
  
She expected Bad Wolf to come swooping down. She promised she’d been waiting high above to make sure all according to plan and Martha knew she could travel between places instantaneously. But it was Tom who came barreling to her rescue with a loud scream. “NO!”   
  
The Master adjusted his aim and fired. The yellow beam hit Tom directly in the chest. His cry died in his throat and he collapsed to the ground, dead. The Master chuckled and Martha stared at the prone form of the man she’d started to grow fond of, determined to not let the Master see how much his death hurt. Her expression hardened as she looked at him one again.  
  
Little did the Master know, Tom would be alive soon enough.  
  
But Tom’s death had given the Master a moment to reconsider. “But you…when you die, the Doctor should be witness, hmm?” He paused as if expecting an answer, which never came. He inhaled deeply and his eyes flitted across the homes around him, each holding at least a hundred terrified people. “Almost dawn, Martha. …And planet Earth marches to war.”  
  
He sneered at her. “I think your death will be a perfect way to kick off the fun.” To the Enforcers, “Get her in the van.”  
  
Two UCFs came towards her with their guns raised. She glared at each of them in turn, and then walked towards the SUVs. She was loaded unceremoniously into the back of one and cuffed to the headrest of the front seat. One Enforcer slid into the seat next to her and stared stoically ahead. Two more got in the front and the doors were slammed shut.  
  
Martha refused to look back at Tom’s body as they drove away.  
  
~*~  
  
It was the grand beginning of an interstellar war that the people of Earth had unwillingly engineered. Everything that had occurred in the last year had all been leading up to this. The next phase of the Master’s great plan was finally about to begin. Cameras were set up on the bridge of the _Valiant_ and a live feed was being prepared to broadcast across the entire planet. All across the world, the slaves were ordered to stop working and a majority of them were herded into areas where large screens had been set up for the event. They all went willingly, which surprised the most of the UCFs as very few of them had been privy to Martha’s stories.   
  
Word spread amongst the free peoples and resistance groups that the time had come. Television screens and antennas were built out of old parts. Those who were willing to risk it snuck into known labor camps and slave cities to have a guaranteed view. Tension and anxiety filled the air everywhere people had gathered, overpowering any excitement that people were feeling.   
  
Elliot’s cave group had travelled to a nearby town at the boy’s insistence that they needed to see this and that it would be safe. The members of Torchwood had cobbled together a very rough TV out of Tosh’s old equipment and they and the people of their village gathered around it. The remaining members from the camp in Oregon that Rose had died for gathered in an old dollar store around a TV that Stevie–the girl Martha had saved–managed to get working.   
  
When the screens flickered to life and the Master’s voice rang out, “ _Citizens of Earth, rejoice and observe!”_ the entire world seemed to draw a breath.  
  
The first thing they saw was the Master standing on a pristine platform next to a sickly blonde woman in a silky red dress. Those who bothered to remember such things realized that it was Lucy Saxon, the Master’s wife. Though she had changed much in the past year, and even though she stood up there with him, many of the viewers could tell she belonged down with them.  
  
Then the image on screen changed to a door. It slid open…revealing Martha Jones and two armed guards.  
  
And across the world, millions of people murmured in dismay at the sight of their hero, their Messiah, a prisoner of the Master. For those who didn’t know of her death, there was hope that Rose was still free and ready to act. Then as they watched her slowly approach the platform where the Master stood, a quiet thought began to trickle through: what if this was a part of the plan?  
  
Because surely…if someone really was a prisoner of the Master…shouldn’t they look a bit more scared?  
  
~*~  
  
The bridge hadn’t changed much in the past year. The lighting was a bit different. The long table in in the middle of the room was notably absent–although she was sure it had been there in the broadcast yesterday.   
  
Her family was alive, standing in a row on one side of the room. Her mum and Tish were wearing black maid dresses with white collars, cuffs, and white-rimmed aprons. Her dad was in some sort of janitor or mechanic coveralls. They were thinner and more worn than she’d ever seen them but they seemed to be relatively well groomed. A grisly guard was holding a gun on them.  
  
Jack was standing across from her with his own personal armed guard that was keeping a careful eye on him. His skin and clothes were filthy, his hair greasy and matted, like he hadn’t had a shower in a long time. He nodded to her as she passed.   
  
A wrinkled creature with a large, bald, domed head, oversized ears, and enormous brown eyes stared at her from within a bird came hanging from the ceiling. He had on a mini pinstriped suit and a thin, silver chain was wrapped around his arm. Martha recognized it instantly, and though part of her wondered how it was possible that he had it, she knew that this could only be the Doctor. He looked so miserable even as he smiled at her and she knew he was seeing the empty space where Rose ought to be.  
  
The Bad Wolf–where was she? They hadn’t discussed the particulars of her location for this part of plan, just that she would be here when it was time.   
  
Martha stopped at the base of the platform in front of the stairs, almost the exact same spot that she had teleported off of the _Valiant_ with Rose. The Master was holding out his hand, gesturing with his fingers. “Your teleport device,” he ordered. “In case you thought I’d forgotten.”  
  
Speak of the devil. Irritably, she leaned down and pulled it out of a pocket in her trousers, tossing it up to him. He caught it deftly.   
  
“And now…kneel,” he commanded.  
  
She sighed inwardly but did as he ordered. It wasn’t time yet. But soon. Soon she was going to shove it all back in the smug bastard’s face.  
  
“Down below, the fleet is ready to launch. Two hundred thousand ships…set to burn across the universe,” he declared savagely then bounded up the stairs to a comm link. “Are we ready?”  
  
 _“The fleet awaits your signal,”_ a man replied. _“Rejoice!”_  
  
The Master looked at his watch. “Three minutes to align the black hole converters.” A clock on the wall flicked to 180 seconds and began ticking downwards. “Counting down!”  
  
179\. 178.  
  
 _YES!_ Martha cheered inwardly. The Doctor had been right! _There it is everybody. There’s your timer._  
  
The Master turned to his audience, smiling gleefully. “I never could resist a ticking clock,” he practically giggled then he raised his voice. “My children! Are you ready?”  
  
Then from the speakers came the chilling childlike voices of the… Remnants. That name was the most appropriate for them. They weren’t spheres, they weren’t Toclafane, they weren’t human. Just Remnants of a time gone by. _“We will fly and blaze and slice! We will fly and blaze and slice!”_  
  
160\. 159.   
  
“At zero, to mark this day, the child, Martha Jones, will die.” He laughed under his breath. “My first blood.” He laughed again. “Any last words?”  
  
She glowered at him stonily.   
  
He wasn’t impressed. “No? …Such a disappointment, this one.” He descended the top flight of stairs. “Your other one, Doctor, she could absorb the time vortex. Shame she’s dead, ‘cos this one’s useless.”  
  
Martha ignored the jab, her attention on the Doctor whose expression turned acidic at the mention of Rose. But then the Master was pointing his laser screwdriver at her and ordering her to bow her head. So she did.   
  
“And so it falls to me, the Master of all, to establish from this day, a new order of Time Lords!” he declared. Oh, bloody hell. She couldn’t take it anymore. “From this day forward–”  
  
She chuckled.   
  
“What? What’s so funny?”   
  
She raised her head and looked at him like he was stupid. “A gun.”   
  
“What about it?”  
  
“A gun in four parts?”   
  
“Yes, and I destroyed it.” He growled, irritated.   
  
135\. 134.  
  
“A gun in four parts scattered across the world? I mean…come on.” She rolled her eyes. “Did you really believe that?”  
  
He smiled, shaking his head a tiny bit. “What do you mean?”  
  
“As if I would ask them to kill,” the Doctor rasped, gripping one of the bars with his long bony fingers.  
  
“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. I’ve got her exactly where I want her!” And he pointed the laser at her again.  
  
Martha laughed again, a good proper laugh full of scorn. “Really? Are you absolutely sure you’re holding all the cards? That we didn’t stack the deck?”  
  
Then, at the exact same moment, both the Doctor and the Master tensed. The former swiveled his head around to stare at a point next to Martha and the latter inhaled sharply, staring at the same spot. Martha’s grin became a smirk. Bad Wolf had arrived.   
  
“What is that?” the Master growled.  
  
Martha looked, instead, at the Doctor who was staring like he was witnessing the second coming, and smiled. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Bad Wolf appear wearing the outfit Rose had died in, but not the one covered in blood, thankfully. The Doctor let go of the bar and fell back on his bum in shock, brown eyes impossibly wide. Behind her, Jack let out a strangled sound.   
  
89\. 88.  
  
The Master raised the laser screwdriver and fired it at her. Bad Wolf’s hand flicked up and caught the beam. It curled into a palm of energy in her palm, which she then tossed at the Doctor’s cage. It seared through the lock on the doors and several of the bars, freeing him. The Master fired once more but she caught it, formed it into a ball, and tossed it against the opposite wall. He didn’t try again.  
  
Still smiling, Martha got to her feet.   
  
“Don’t you want to know what we were doing?” she asked. “Traveling the world?”  
  
“What?” he spat.   
  
60\. 69.  
  
 _“We did as the Doctor said,”_ Bad Wolf spoke for the first time since arriving; her layered voice was like poisoned honey, smooth but with a cold, biting undercurrent. _“We walked across the continents and told them our stories.”_  
  
“We told them about the Doctor. And we told them to pass it on, to spread the word, so everyone would know about him.”  
  
“Faith and hope?” The Master shook his head scornfully. “Is that all?”  
  
“No. We gave them instruction,” Martha replied.   
  
_“We know how much you love a ticking clock,”_ Bad Wolf purred.  
  
“And if everyone thinks of one word, one thing, one _person_ , at one specific time–”  
  
“Nothing will happen!” the Master interrupted. “Is that your weapon?! Prayer?!”   
  
30\. 29.  
  
“Right across the world.” Martha laughed. “One word, just one thought, at one moment…but with 15 satellites.”  
  
Suddenly the Time Lord didn’t seem so confident. “What?”  
  
“The Archangel Network,” Jack told him.  
  
 _“You’ve bound the entire race together with a telepathic field.”_ Bad Wolf drew herself up. _“You’ve awakened the latent telepathic abilities of 5 billion people. And every single one of them is united against you.”_  
  
10\.   
  
“By seeking to control them, you’ve given them power,” Martha told him savagely. “And now every single person on Earth, all of them, are going to think of the exact same person at the exact same time. And that person…is the Doctor.”  
  
00.  
  
The Doctor began to glow with a brilliant bluish-white light. She saw Bad Wolf’s eyes flare brighter than ever before and golden light was suddenly interwoven with the white. The cage around him dissolved away.  
  
“Stop it!” the Master ordered. “No, no, no, no, no, you don’t.”  
  
 _“Doctor,”_ Bad Wolf whispered. _“My love.”_  
  
“Doctor,” Jack echoed.  
  
“Doctor.”  
  
“Doctor.”  
  
And from the speakers they could hear millions of voices chanting along with them.   
  
“Doctor!”   
  
“Stop this right now!” the Master shouted. “Stop it!”  
  
“Doctor!”  
  
Up on the platform, Lucy Saxon whispered, “Doctor.”  
  
Martha looked at the shining man in the light. He was taller, still old, but de-aging every second. She pictured him young and whole, smiling and happy. Hugging her. Kissing Rose. Running. Laughing. Saving people. Eating bananas and dangling donuts just out of Martha’s reach to tease her. She closed her eyes and whispered, “Doctor.”   
  
“Doctor!”  
  
“I’ve had a whole year to tune myself into the psychic network and integrate with its matrices.” the Doctor said through his teeth.  
  
“I order you to stop!” the Master screamed uselessly.   
  
Martha heard Bad Wolf utter a string of words so softly that she barely caught it and definitely would not have been able to repeat it even if she tried. It was beautiful but it definitely wasn’t English. The light around the Doctor went entirely gold, flaring so bright that Martha had to squint and look away. When it dimmed, he stood on the ground, young and whole again.  
  
“The one thing you can’t do,” he growled. “Stop them thinking.”  
  
Martha laughed and Jack did too. She turned and looked at her family, beaming at them, and Francine held out her arms. Martha ran towards her immediately and breathed out a sigh of pure relief as she felt her mother’s arms around her for the first time in over two years. Then Tish’s arms. Then her father’s hand on her back.  
  
“No!” The Master snarled and the laser fired.  
  
Martha turned around in time to see the beam be absorbed harmlessly into the field of light around the Doctor.   
  
“I’m sorry,” said the glowing Time Lord. The Master fired again and again to the same effect. “I’m so sorry.”  
  
The Master adjusted one of the controls on the screwdriver. “Then I’ll kill them!” he said, pointing it and Martha and her family. But Bad Wolf flicked her hand and the laser flew out of his hand and exploded into dust, mid-air.   
  
Now he was well and truly terrified. Bad Wolf waved her hand once more and the Master lifted into the air, kicking and flailing, and then she slammed him into the floor at the Doctor’s feet. He had to be in pain but he stilled rolled to his hands and knees and tried to crawl away. The Doctor advanced on him.  
  
“No!” the Master shouted. “No! My children!!”  
  
Bad Wolf could sense the moment all the Remnants began swarming down to Earth. Through the speakers their voices screamed as one: _Protect the paradox! Protect the paradox!_  
  
She was inclined to agree with them but knew she couldn’t. The paradox had to go. Its time was up. And so was hers. But first…  
  
“Captain!” the Doctor bellowed. “The paradox machine!”   
  
Jack nodded. “You men, with me!” he ordered some of the Enforcers, including the one who had been guarding him, and told a few others to stay behind. They raced out of the room.   
  
Shit. She was out of time. There was still plenty of Archangel energy left to draw on. She reached for it as well as the own energy she’d been gathering for this exact thing. And then…  
  
On the floor, the Master was pulling out the vortex manipulator.   
  
The Doctor saw what he was doing and lunged towards him. “No!”  
  
Everything went silent.   
  
Still.  
  
Utterly still.   
  
Not a sound, not a twitch. Even the hum of the engines was gone.   
  
The Doctor noticed almost immediately. He slowly let go of the Master and looked around the room, at the people, then his eyes fell on Bad Wolf. She was as still as the rest of them but she was merely waiting. His expression was thunderous, his mouth open in a tiny ‘o’ of disbelief. And, slowly, she allowed a smile to grace her lips.   
  
His hand tightened around the silver chain woven around it. Rose’s necklace. How in the hell did he have it? He took a step towards her. His eyes were positively brimming with emotion and he looked so hopeful that it hurt both her halves.   
  
“Rose?” he breathed.  
  
“ _My Doctor_ ,” she whispered.   
  
He shook his head slowly and said just as softly, “I thought you were dead. All this time he’s been telling me you were dead. He showed me your grave. He had this–” he held up the hand with her necklace wrapped around it, glancing down at her neck, and his voice died in his throat. Rose’s necklace was clearly visible around her neck, as was the TARDIS key hanging off it.   
  
The Doctor looked from hand to her neck. “But…I don’t… I _recognize_ this….”  
  
 _“Where did he get it?”_  
  
“He…he had your grave dug up t-to make sure it was actually yours. But your body wasn’t there, only this. Or so he said.”  
  
Bad Wolf frowned. Rose’s body wasn’t in her grave but the necklace only she could remove was? …That did explain why Rose didn’t wake up still inside her body. They must have destroyed it as they were coming to life. The rush of energy would’ve been enough to atomize flesh, bone, and the TARDIS key, but not the necklace.   
  
_“He was telling the truth.”_  
  
“But you’re wearing it now, I can see it.”  
  
 _“He was telling the truth about everything.”_  
  
The Doctor inhaled sharply and then shook his head. “No. No, no, no, no. You’re right in front of me; I can see you, I can hear you. I can feel your mind! How are you dead?!”   
  
_“I could show you proof but it would only hurt you. Please, don’t ask me to. I don’t want you to see me that way.”_  
  
All the life seemed to drain away and the Doctor’s face crumpled. Her heart broke for him and she wanted so badly to hold him. The tears she could not form were welling in his eyes. He ducked his head and ranked his fingers through his hair and grabbed fistfuls of it in the back.   
  
_“Doctor, look at me,”_ Bad Wolf pleaded. _“I’m not Rose.”_ She walked slowly towards him, shifting to her very first form, then she stopped. _“I am the Bad Wolf.”_  
  
He stared down at her numbly.   
  
_“But she’s here. In me. She’s me. Everything she feels, so do I. All her love….”_ She reached her hand up to his cheek. She brushed her fingers through the space where his skin began, feeling a small tingle in her fingers, and mirrored the action with her mind against his. He trembled and his eyes slipped shut.   
  
She let her hand fall and ceased the mental contact. His jaw trembled and a moment later he opened his eyes. By then, she had returned to her previous form. If the change surprised him he didn’t show it. “You’ve gotta go. You know what happens if you stay here.”  
  
Bad Wolf smiled. _“We’re in a time bubble. We’ve got a bit yet.”_  
  
He looked around the room in interest, suddenly remembering that everything around them was, in fact, frozen. “You did this?”  
  
She nodded. _“I’m somewhat limited without the time vortex to draw on. Been conserving power for weeks.”_  
  
“How long can you hold it?”  
  
 _“Not long. Maybe ten minutes more. After that I’ll have to leave immediately. I have an important job for you, Doctor. In exchange, you may ask anything of me and I will answer.”_  
  
The Doctor swallowed and looked down at his hand. “How did you die?”  
  
 _“I give you the chance to learn anything and you wish to know how Rose Tyler died?”_  
  
“Please,” he implored. “You don’t have to show me but I–I _need_ to know.”  
  
 _“A group of Enforcers had been pursuing us relentlessly for months, often killing many members of camps we were in just to find us. She couldn’t sit by again and allow more people to die because of her and her anger was enough to awaken me. I killed them. Their leader, Moran, tried to shoot Martha as he was dying. But Rose pushed her out of the way. She was shot in the side–here.”_ She pointed to the spot.  
  
“So you died in battle,” he said as he exhaled. “Guess it was right after all.”  
  
Bad Wolf nodded. _“Doctor…I swear. I am going to do everything I can to give her back to you. But I can’t promise you anything.”_  
  
“What?!” His voice, usually high and squawky when he uttered that word by itself, was barely more than a panicked croak. “Why?”  
  
Bad Wolf pressed her lips together. _“Do you know what I am, Doctor? I am Rose Tyler…and the TARDIS. They both are me and I am them. I’ve always been them. Ever since the beginning. Think back over the last year you spent with Rose. All those feelings, instincts, urges–she felt them through the TARDIS just as the TARDIS felt through her. I’m always there in the place where they are bonded and because of me, they could sense each other. You could always see it in her eyes when I was awake.”_  
  
The Doctor’s mouth parted in a small ‘o’ of comprehension. “That’s why she was able to heal.”  
  
She nodded, smiling. _“Me. Always me. The TARDIS has the power but she can’t use it. Rose has no power but if she did she could wield it. Put them together and you get a creature of time who can command it and wild unfathomable power. You get me. For as long as Rose and the TARDIS are bonded, I will always exist, even if I’m not awake.”_  
  
“Alright but that doesn’t explain why you can’t promise me she’ll come back.”  
  
 _“Doctor, you know how paradox machines work. Tell me: is it possible for a TARDIS to die as long as the machine is fully functional?”_  
  
“No,” he answered immediately. “The price of a paradox machine is too great for them to be made on a whim. There’d be no sense in going through that and sacrificing a TARDIS if it could fail at any given moment.”  
  
 _“And that is how I am here. Our bond is strong enough for Tardis to keep Rose here but only since she herself cannot die.”_  
  
“But when the paradox machine is destroyed, the TARDIS can die.”  
  
 _“And there is nothing holding either of them here. Tardis will release her hold on Rose and not join her in death.”_  
  
“But if you’re not on the _Valiant_ –”  
  
 _“Then I will be caught in the reversal, just like the rest of the world. I am aware. But our issue is time. If Rose dies before time begins to reverse, then she will revive along with everyone else. But if she dies as time is reversing–”_  
  
“She’ll be lost to time,” he finished in a whisper. He took a deep breath, shuddering as he exhaled.   
  
_“Doctor, we don’t have long. So listen because I need your help.”_  
  
“Anything,” he said immediately.   
  
_“I’m going to give you a…package of knowledge that I need you to keep safe within your mind. If and when Rose is with you again, give it to her. There is every possibility she won’t remember the past year and we agree that she needs to. There’s also a few things in there, knowledge Rose would like to have that the TARDIS has agreed she can. Do you consent?”_  
  
The Doctor nodded. “Yes.”  
  
 _“Thank you.”_  
  
She tapped her mind against his in three precise knocks, like he had taught Rose long ago. He smiled and she could sense the memory in his mind as he allowed her in. She wondered if he could see both of her individual minds or all he saw was one, larger mind. Did it matter right now? She had more important things to worry about. The package was already ready; it was simply a matter of finding a place to put it. He must have heard her because his mind reshaped into a long hall full of doors, and it was her turn to smile at the old analogy he loved to use. One of the doors was already open and the room inside was completely empty. She placed the package there and pulled the door shut.  
  
Withdrawing from his mind, she waited until he opened his eyes and smiled at him. _“If you become certain that Rose will not return, then we give you permission to open the package yourself. But know that you cannot pick and choose what memories you see. You will experience them all…including her death.”_  
  
“I understand,” he said with a nod. She nodded, too. For a moment they simply stood in front of each other, drinking each other in, and wishing more than anything that they could touch.  
  
Bad Wolf could feel the time bubble beginning to thin. She looked at the Master who was still frozen with the vortex manipulator in his hand. She frowned, grabbed it telekinetically, and tossed it to the Doctor. He caught it with a nod and tucked it into his pocket.   
  
_“Doctor, what do you plan to do with him?”_  
  
He sighed, rubbing the back of his and. “Well, he’s a Time Lord so he’s my responsibility. Dunno. Keep him in the TARDIS. Plenty of rooms we can keep him locked in.”  
  
 _“You wish to keep him prisoner.”_  
  
“Essentially, yes.”  
  
She sighed, only a little surprised, but did not tell him his solution was inadequate. Bad Wolf drifted up just a few inches so they were eye to eye. _“Time’s almost up.”_  
  
He stared at her intently and reached a hand out to caress her cheek. She leaned towards him and even though he passed through, she felt the tingle of light telepathic contact where his hand was. He must’ve felt it because he closed his eyes.   
  
_“…I love you,”_ she told him, adopting Rose’s accent. He blinked his eyes open, jaw going slack. _“More than anythin’ in the universe. Remember that…just in case.”_  
  
“Rose…. I will love you for the rest of my lives,” he murmured in Gallifreyan, voice breaking. “For as long as my hearts beat, they are yours.”   
  
Smiling, she brushed her lips against his, savoring the tingle of contact, and caressed his mind at the same moment. His mind nuzzled against hers in response. Drawing back, she gave him the most tender smile she could, wanting that to be his final memory of her. Then she pushed him from the time bubble.   
  
He remained frozen as he was, arms raised as if to cup her face, his eyes so old, and his face full of love and grief.   
  
She took a deep breath, the very human response helping to manage the very human emotions racing through her. Then she looked at the Master once more and pulled him into the time bubble.  
  
His fingers clamped down onto nothing and his vicious smile turned into a look of utter confusion. “What?” He looked down at his empty hands, turning them this way and that. Then he seemed to notice the unnatural silence and stillness, the way his time senses weren’t working right. His head whipped around, body following a second later.   
  
_“Time Lord.”_  
  
The Master spun around and his eyes narrowed. “You!”   
  
Bad Wolf dematerialized and rematerialized directly in front of him. He jumped back.   
  
_“Me.”_  
  
“What are you?” he hissed. “You’re not the Doctor’s little woman.”  
  
 _“I am the Bad Wolf. …Ah, you know of me. Good. Then you must know why I am here.”_  
  
He backed away from her. “No! This isn’t fair!”  
  
 _“Fair?”_ she growled, floating upwards to tower over him. Her eyes blazed with the golden fire of time. _“You wish to speak of fair? What of the children who lost their parents? Of mothers and fathers who lost their children? What of lovers torn apart? What of the children whose innocence you’ve stolen? What of the six hundred million people you ordered killed on the first day? What of the people of Japan? What of the psychic child who felt his parents die? What of the woman who was forced to watch her child mutilated by a Remnant for its enjoyment? What of Martha Jones who held Rose as she died from the bullet meant for her? Do not speak to me of what is fair and what is not.”_  
  
He gaped at her, speechless. Even the Master quivered beneath the wrath of the Bad Wolf. _“Time and Space have judged and found you guilty of high crimes throughout time and the universe. You have violated the Laws of Time in a manner that is unforgivable. You desecrated the last TARDIS and turned her into a paradox machine for unwarranted and malevolent purposes. Your life is forfeit.”_  
  
With that, she plunged her hands inside his body, closed her fists around his hearts, and turned them to dust. His eyes bulged and he let out a choked noise. She withdrew her hands sharply and gave him a look of disgust. He collapsed to the floor, gasping and choking, limbs twitching, body convulsing. She felt the regeneration energy beginning to run through his body, a last ditch effort to save himself, but she latched onto it, drawing it out and let it dissipate into the air. And then he fell still. She sensed his body stop functioning and felt his mind drift away.  
  
She took one last look around the room, eyes lingering on Martha, Jack, and the Doctor as the last seconds of the time bubble grew nearer and nearer. And then she dematerialized, ending it.   
  
She rematerialized just a few miles away from the _Valiant_ and settled near the ground to wait.  
  
 _We did it,_ Rose thought.   
  
_We did,_ Tardis agreed.   
  
_And now… Oh, God, I’m scared. I don’t want to leave him. You saw his face at the end, he was saying goodbye!  
  
Perhaps. But those words he said to you…do you know what they were?  
  
I could understand him.  
  
But do you know what they **meant?** …That was part of a vow, usually spoken during or before a binding ceremony and only between two lovers. He has promised to never love another as he loves you for the rest of his existence.   
  
But I–I want him to be happy one day. I don’t want him to spend the rest of his life pinin’ over me.   
  
My little one, he and I have been together for centuries. I have seen many faces come and go and while he cared for all of them, there were a few for whom his feelings went further. I would call it love but it was never like the love he feels for you. By uttering those words, he was acknowledging that aloud. And, truly, if he was able to say them to you, he must believe he will never love another after you. _  
  
Rose was silent, shocked and humbled by the sheer amount of devotion those words had carried and that she would never have known if Tardis hadn’t explained.  
  
 _He knew I would know what they meant,_ Tardis told her. _Even if you did not. Would you like to know the appropriate response to his vow?  
  
Do we have time? _  
  
_Time enough_ , Tardis assured her. Then she quoted her the full version of the vow that the Doctor had given her. _Each person says two lines at a time and then the last part together Ask him to explain the symbolism. If you lose these memories, I will return them to you myself.  
  
Thank you. _ Rose said empathetically. _For everything.  
  
I thank you as well. There is no other I would wish to be bonded with in such a way. You are a good soul, Rose Tyler, and I do not believe this is goodbye, but if you do not return then I hope you find rest. I will take care of him until he joins you in what awaits beyond.   
  
But don’t let that be too soon, yeah?  
  
Of course not. The universe has need of him yet. …The Captain is inside my console room! _ Tardis realized suddenly and immediately began pulling against the strands binding them together. She had to let go or she, too, would fall away. Rose assisted her, pulling against her own bindings as much as she could but she lacked the purchase that Tardis did.   
  
They both felt a physical jolt as the paradox machine’s central control was attacked, felt the sting of each individual bullet that pierced metal, the burns as it exploded. And suddenly nothing was holding either of them to life and the pull of death suddenly returned with all the force it had once used to pull Rose from her body. Time began to stir around them. Tardis gave one last mighty tug and broke free   
  
and Rose spiraled away into


	73. When Two Hearts Break

In the days following the end of the paradox, Martha made sure someone was with the Doctor at all times. She didn’t think he was suicidal but she wouldn’t put it past him to try something foolish.  
  
On the Valiant, there had been a weird little jump in time. One second the Master had been on his feet and the Doctor was lunging towards him, the next the Master was on the ground and the Doctor in a completely different spot looking for all the world like he had just had both hearts painfully broken. Martha knew Bad Wolf was to blame. She’d needed to speak with him and she must’ve messed with time to do it. The Master’s death had been her fault, too. There was simply no other explanation for his sudden relocation and death. And from the expression on his face, it had not been painless.   
  
It had not taken very long at all for the Doctor to snap out of whatever daze he was lost in and notice Master dead on the floor. After that he just…shut down. He spoke when needed, answered questions presented to him, but all of his usual enthusiasm was gone. He looked at the world like it had nothing left to offer him.   
  
When he went into the TARDIS for the first time, he hadn’t reacted beyond a sigh. He’d been very detached, border lining on apathetic as he made his way around the console room, the engine room, and several other rooms she’d never seen before and took stock of everything the Master had done. He’d asked Jack to make a list of everything because he wasn’t sure if he could remember it. Coming from the man who knew the first 10,000 digits of pi by heart, this was very worrying.  
  
He’d scared the life out of her and Jack when he disappeared on the third night, only to come back smelling strongly of smoke. He told them he’d cremated the Master. Monster or not, he had a right to a Gallifreyan send-off, and this way no one would be able to use his body for science, upsetting the flow of human history. While he seemed more at ease after that, he was still not in any way back to his usual self, largely due to the fact that there had been no sign of Rose.   
  
All the people who had been on the _Valiant_ when the year began hadn’t been there when it ended. They’d all turned up in the middle of a parking lot in South England with no memory of how they’d arrived, and very scrambled memories of what had happened on the ship’s bridge. Rose had not been among them. Jack had placed calls to everyone he could think of to see if she’d turned up somewhere. None of her friends and family had seen her. According to Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, she had not turned up at UNIT, nor had he seen her personally. He made a trip to the Hub but no one was there. Sarah Jane Smith’s computer, Mr. Smith, could not locate Rose’s biosignature anywhere on planet Earth and neither the woman nor her son had seen her.   
  
And the TARDIS could not scan for her because she was still out of commission. Being turned into a paradox machine and then being shot up apparently wasn’t good for her health. She was in some sort of self-healing coma and the Doctor spent his days repairing the things she could not.   
  
Martha knew her family needed her but she was very worried about the Doctor and ended up spending a lot of her time in the ship with him. When she wasn’t with him, Jack was. Things got better after Sarah Jane turned up with a little robot dog called K-9 that greeted him in a chipper little voice, “Master!”   
  
Martha had glanced nervously at the Doctor, expecting him to react poorly to the name, but the Doctor had smiled and patted the dog on its head. “Hey there, boy. Did you come to help me fix the Old Girl?”  
  
K9 bobbed his head up and down and the little antenna-like tail on his rear twitched. “Affirmative.”  
  
Sarah Jane volunteered to keep watch over the Doctor so Martha could focus more on her family, and Jack could deal with the political fallout. And K-9 was able to help with repairs and diagnostics.   
  
During the second day when Jack was filling in for Sarah Jane, the woman came to find Martha and admitted that she didn’t really have any idea what was going on. So Martha explained as best as she could what had happened during the last year and why it had never happened. Sarah Jane was utterly horrified and when Martha told her that Rose had died, tears formed in the woman’s eyes and she covered her mouth with her hand.  
  
“So that’s why…. I knew she was missing but the Captain didn’t tell me that she… Oh, God, no wonder you don’t want him left alone. …No, wait. You said everything that happened was undone. Shouldn’t she be here?”  
  
So Martha told her everything she knew about the Bad Wolf, finishing off with the explanation she’d been given regarding why Rose might not come back.   
  
“And you think she didn’t make it in time,” Sarah Jane deduced afterwards. She looked troubled. “That would explain my Mr. Smith wasn’t able to locate her. If she was dead he could at least find her body, but if she was lost in time, then there wouldn’t be anything left to find.”  
  
Martha nodded.   
  
Sarah Jane took a deep breath. “You know, the Doctor once told me that in times of old, Gallifreyans were passionate creatures. It was because of their telepathy. Everything from grief to joy, hate to love, they felt it so much more potently than we do. Of course most that had been stamped out of their natures by the Doctor’s time, but I suspect, being born like he was, he had more of his kind's original nature from the start. But, I wondered after he told me this, how his people were able to handle loss if they felt it so keenly. Humans have been known to die of broken hearts after the loss of their spouse. If Gallifreyans loved more strongly than we do, then I imagine death from broken hearts must have happened quite frequently.”  
  
“Yeah, I bet it did,” Martha murmured. “You don’t think he…”  
  
She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t now. I’ll need to speak with Jack about the Doctor’s behavior onboard the _Valiant_. But, Martha, you were right to keep him under careful watch.”  
  
Martha nodded again. He wasn’t human, after all, and they had no idea what a Gallifreyan might do after losing his mate.   
  
It was a week before the TARDIS was well enough to reform her corridors and rooms. Sarah Jane took to sleeping onboard, as did Martha and Jack. No amount of teamwork managed to get the Doctor into a bed even though, according to Jack, he hadn’t slept in three weeks. Martha knew he hadn’t been sleeping lately out of fear of nightmares. She remembered Rose telling her he suffered from vicious nightmares that she alone had been able to keep at bay. Without her there, any sleep he got would not be peaceful.   
  
He didn’t change clothes often. Only when the ones he was wearing got dirty and soiled enough for his keeper to protest. He was always wearing something blue–the exact shade of his blue suit to be specific. Martha wondered at the significance of the color. Was dark blue to Gallifreyans what black was to humans?  
  
Eating was also something that had to be forced. She, Jack, and Sarah Jane always told whoever had the next shift if he’d eaten, and if he went through two shifts without eating, the third always made sure he ate. But he was still losing weight. One day she found him in Rose’s room, curled on the bed they shared with his eyes closed. He didn’t react to Martha’s arrival, didn’t open his eyes as she called his name. But she knew better than to think he was sleeping. He was far too tense.   
  
Throughout it all, though, he continued repairing the TARDIS. It was his outlet, his way to make himself useful in a world that was passing him by. He was adrift without his anchor and the four of them (including K-9) were just enough to keep him tethered to sanity. Their shifts usually were spent sitting with him in the console room, handing him tools, holding things, or telling him if a little light on the console or some other doohickey was blinking. Jack and K-9 were actually able to help him with repairs.   
  
And, boy, did the TARDIS need them. Almost every single system had been mutilated and manipulated and they all had to be repaired. Some parts were completely trashed, which involved many runs to the Torchwood Hub as well as UNIT bases and storage facilities across the world to find suitable replacements. The TARDIS apparently had the ability to regrow certain vital components, and when that function was back online, their trips became less frequent.  
  
Her family were faring a little better than he was. Her parents apparently had worked enough things out between them that they were comfortable together again. Nothing like a year in a purgatory to bring people together. “We’re far from okay,” her mum had told her one day as they sat at the kitchen table with two mugs of tea. “We’ve still got a lot to work through. Right now, I just… We don’t want to be apart.”   
  
“What about his girlfriend?” Martha asked. She knew her dad had had one but details, like the woman’s name, had slipped away. It began with ‘An’, she remembered. Anika? Angel? Anna? Anna sounded about right. It’d been a long time since she’d given thought to the woman and longer since she’d seen her. But she remembered she’d been a bit of a bimbo, not the kind of woman her dad needed after what he’d been through.   
  
Francine rolled her eyes and took a sip of her tea. “She’s not going to be around anymore.” She set her cup down on the table. “Apparently you, Rose, Jack, and the Doctor were labeled terrorists at some point. You’ve been exonerated in light of Saxon’s conspiracy, but she doesn’t like the fact your father was arrested. Or that he’s been sleeping at my house every night. She called me a cow and accused me of stealing her man.”  
  
Martha nearly spat out her tea. She managed to swallow before she gasped out, “No! Oh you’re kidding me! What did you tell her?”  
  
“That it wasn’t my fault she wasn’t doing it for him.”   
  
“But isn’t that what she–” Martha’s eyes widened and Francine smiled wickedly. She threw her head back and laughed so loud and hard that her belly ached. It felt good, laughing like that with her mother. They hadn’t done that in a very, very long time. Well over two years for Martha.   
  
The thought sobered her and her laughter slowly died out. She turned to look out the window of their kitchen where the TARDIS was clearly visible in the backyard. Francine followed her gaze.  
  
“Still no sign?”   
  
Martha shook her head. “She had all that time to prepare. She knew how precise she’d have to be. She told me she’d be ready. I want to believe she made it. I really do but…it’s been nearly two weeks. If she were alive, you think she’d at least have found a phone by now.”  
  
“Don’t let him hear you say that,” her mum warned sharply. She and the Doctor had developed a rapport during their time onboard the _Valiant_. Martha’d known about it for a while now but it was still surprising to see her mum being protective of the man she’d once despised   
  
“I won’t,” she assured her. “But I’m sure he’s already thought of it.”  
  
“You know, the day the Master told us about her, one of the guards let slip earlier that morning that someone had died and the Master was excited. I thought it was you.” Her lips trembled at the memory. “You don’t know how relieved I was when he said you were alive. I was glad it was her and not you.” She glanced at her daughter and looked away, ashamed. “But then I saw the Doctor’s face–he hardly ever showed emotion in those days and he looked so distraught. And he was _crying_ –”  
  
She took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “I would have given anything in that moment to bring her back to him.”  
  
“I promised her I’d take care of him,” Martha blurted out.  
  
Francine looked at her in alarm. She schooled her features immediately and took a sip of her tea. “I see.”  
  
“She was dying, Mum, right there in my arms and I couldn’t do anything! I’m a doctor for God’s sake. I should’ve been able to do something. If I’d had the right tools I could’ve saved her. Giving her peace of mind was the only thing I could do.” She paused and took a deep breath, blinking back tears. “And now I don’t even know if I can help him. Humans have trouble enough when our hearts break. Imagine how it’ll be for an alien with two. He’s going to need everyone he has left. …But I want to stay with you. I want to go back to med-school. I’m _tired_ of traveling.”   
  
Francine inhaled slowly through her nose and considered her for a long minute. “I don’t know how to help either of you. You’re going to have to decide on your own what’s best for you. I won’t deny he needs people with him but if he cares for you at all, then he will understand no matter what you decide.”  
  
“I know he will. That’s what worries me. He’ll understand no matter what and he won’t try to stop me, even if it hurts him.”   
  
She didn’t tell him what she was considering but she wasn’t entirely sure that he didn’t already know. The way he looked at her when she came ‘round for her shifts, the questions he asked. Like if she planned on continuing to sleep in her bed onboard the TARDIS. Had she given any thought to where she’d like to go next?  
  
Thirteen days after TARDIS repairs began, the Doctor turned up at her door at 9am to tell her that they were heading to Cardiff soon. He’d done all he could for the TARDIS as far as physical repairs went. Now all she needed was to recharge.   
  
“A big ol’ meal of rift energy. A day of that and she’ll be all systems go.” The words were right, the inflections and everything were too, but the energy and the cheer that should accompany it were missing. “Jack’s coming obviously but Sarah Jane says she needs to get back to her son. You goin’ or stayin’?”  
  
“Going,” she said.   
  
The TARDIS wasn’t able to fly yet so Jack had gotten them a lorry that would transport the ship to Cardiff. Martha and Doctor remained inside for the duration of the trip while Jack rode with the driver. Probably got his number, too. Once they were in Cardiff and the TARDIS was situated just off the Plass–Jack complaining that the Doctor’s favorite spot to park his ship was actually the entrance to their secret elevator and they might need it–Jack invited them down into the Hub.   
  
The Doctor refused and quickly set out to explore Cardiff. Not wanting to leave him on his own, Martha followed. He allowed her to keep up with him, though she doubted he’d actually be able to ditch her even if he wanted to. He may have been physically superior but she’d spent the last year on the move while he’d been stuck on a spaceship. She had an edge.   
  
“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to.”  
  
Martha blinked at him. “What?”   
  
The Doctor didn’t look at her as he continued to walk. “You, Jack, Sarah Jane, don’t think I haven’t noticed you’re taking shifts on me. I’ve barely had a moment alone since the _Valiant_.”  
  
“You don’t want us around?”  
  
“I don’t mind the company. It’s the reason behind the company that irks me.” Now he did look at her. “And babysitting me wasn’t Jack’s idea, was it Dr. Jones?”  
  
“We’re just concerned for you.”  
  
“You think I’m going to do something stupid. Well, I don’t plan on killing myself, so you can stop.”  
  
She pressed her lips together. “Don’t think I will, actually.”  
  
He glowered down at her. Once that expression might have intimidated her but not anymore. “That’s not gonna work on me,” she told him bluntly. “You’re stuck with me for a while yet so you might as well get over it.”  
  
“You’re not staying behind, then?”  
  
“I want to,” she admitted. “I might. But, at least until you leave Earth, I’m with you. …I made a promise.”   
  
He sucked in a sharp breath and ducked his head. “Oh.”  
  
They walked in silence for a time. The entered a park that was mostly empty and the Doctor veered towards the playground. There were a few children playing on the equipment and a handful of parents sat on nearby benches. One mother was at the top with her son while the father waited at the bottom of the slide to catch him. The swings were empty until the two time travelers sat down, rocking just a bit, feet dragging along in the mulch.   
  
This seemed like a good place to ask the questions she’d been wanting to. And he had a way to escape if he didn’t want to answer or found it too painful.  
  
“Doctor… what did your people do…when they lost their spouses?”   
  
He didn’t answer right away. Martha glanced over and saw he had his eyes closed. “That depended. If it was a typical Time Lord marriage, often there was a period of mourning following the memorial and cremation. But the surviving spouse would recover and get on with their life. Usually they’d remarry. But among the common Gallifreyans…those who loved and formed intimate telepathic bonds... the surviving spouse never fully recovered. They were so intimately joined that losing their partner was like losing part of themselves. Many died of grief.”  
  
“You and Rose didn’t…”  
  
“No,” he whispered. “But I–I wanted…” The Doctor shook his head quickly and looked down at his wrist where he had Rose’s necklace wrapped.   
  
“Would it…make you feel better if we had a ceremony with your people’s customs?” Martha asked.  
  
He shook his head quickly. “No, no. Why? I haven’t even had a chance to look for her yet. Properly. I can do scans Sarah’s computer couldn’t. I’ve got the TARDIS, too, once she wakes up. Rose has got traces of Huon particles. Practically unique in the universe! …You have to give me a chance,” the Doctor pleaded. “I can’t just take your word for it.”  
  
“I know you do. We all need you to. But I meant…if you can’t…we would have some sort of funeral for her ourselves. Jack says that Torchwood’s got protocols for this sort of thing but he’d overturn them. She’s got family and friends that deserve to know. But we thought you might like it if–”  
  
“You’re planning her funeral?” he rasped. “You haven’t even let me _look_ for myself and you…”  
  
Martha searched his dark, intense eyes. In that moment she could see just how truly desperate he was. She’d witnessed his struggle to get by from day to day without a vital part of himself. But he, like all of them, had been waiting for Rose to appear. Perhaps expecting it to happen at any moment. Now fourteen days after time reversed, he was clinging to the last vestiges of hope with everything he had. To find out those closest to Rose were already planning a funeral….   
  
The Doctor sniffed and worked his jaw a bit, obviously fighting back tears. He pushed off the swings and took off at a brisk pace towards the park exit, shoulders hunched, hands stuffed in his pockets, coat billowing around his legs. Martha did not follow.   
  
The TARDIS was powered up enough for her scanners to work by that evening. The Doctor spent the rest of the night running every scan he could think of, even ones that wouldn’t have helped if they knew for a fact she was somewhere on the planet. He searched for her biosignature, TARDIS keys (which Jack cross-referenced with the addresses of known companions), Huon particles (which registered a faint trace at the home of one Donna Noble), and even the signature of the necklace he had around his wrist just in case an identical one was reformed with Rose. He looked for anomalies in time, he used the data the Master’s people had collected about Rose’s altered biosignature. Each search came up empty and as time wore on, the Doctor’s mood became bleaker.   
  
“Doc, you need to stop and take a break.” Jack suggested around four in the morning. “Eat something. Actually sleep for once. You’ll be amazed what a little nap will do. Maybe you’ll think of something else–”  
  
“No,” the Time Lord croaked.  
  
“Please, just–”  
  
“DON’T YOU THINK I KNOW?” the Doctor roared, rounding on him. Jack held his ground but Martha backed away. “DON’T YOU THINK I HAVEN’T TRIED? I CAN’T SLEEP.”  
  
“Doc, you’re grieving. I get that. I know what you’re going through. But you need to try and if you’ll let us, we’ll help you.”  
  
“You’re not sleeping with me, Jack,” he growled through his teeth.  
  
“Why not? It helped Rose.”  
  
The Doctor’s expression went from incredulous to murderous. “What?”  
  
“She missed you. She had trouble sleeping those first few weeks. She went for two days with almost no sleep before she finally came to me about it. After that, until she got her own room and bed, she slept in mine. We didn’t have sex,” he told him bluntly when the Doctor continued to scowl. “She just needed someone to hold her.”  
  
The Doctor shook his head back and forth slowly, no longer angry, just resigned. “I don’t need someone. I need _her_.”  
  
“She said the same about you.”  
  
He sighed and sank into the jump seat, burying his face in his hands.  
  
“He’s right about you needing sleep, though,” Martha added. “What’s it been for you? A month? We all know that’s too long. Maybe once you’ve rested you’ll think of something else.”  
  
“No, but that’s just it. I’ve run through everything. Rose isn’t here. The parameters of the Huon scan alone covered the entire galaxy. There’s _nothing_.”  
  
Martha cocked her head to the side. Around them, the TARDIS hummed steadily like it had been doing for the last eight hours. Her eyes widened and she nearly smacked herself on the forehead for not realizing sooner. “There is one thing you haven’t tried yet.”   
  
Jack spun around. “What?”  
  
“Has anyone else noticed how quiet the TARDIS is? I thought up until now she hadn’t been responding because she was in her healing coma. But now she’s definitely awake and she’s still not talking. Usually the lights flicker or the rotor if she wants us to know what she thinks about something. She hasn’t. TARDIS,” she looked up at the ceiling. “Move the rotor up and down.”  
  
She and Jack looked at the rotor expectantly. Nothing happened. “See?” she insisted. “Something’s not right.”   
  
The Doctor slowly raised his head. “What are you getting at, Martha?”  
  
“Rose has a piece of the TARDIS’s consciousness in her mind. They were going to separate when the paradox ended just in case Rose didn’t make it back. What if that piece was more important than we thought?” She looked between Jack and the Doctor. “I spent a lot of time with Bad Wolf. There were things that were definitely Rose and things that definitely _weren’t_. She said she was equal parts TARDIS and Rose. Rose was a full human consciousness. So the part of the TARDIS that was with her had to be the exact equivalent. What if…the part of herself she transferred to Rose…was everything that made her…well… _her_?”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“We’re in the TARDIS but I don’t think she is. I think this is just the ship running on autopilot. Doctor, have you been able to speak with her?”  
  
The Doctor blinked then slowly shook his head.  
  
“So…where’s her mind gone?” Martha let the question hang in the air. “We just assumed she would come back to her body but what if she didn’t? What if she went back to Rose?” She turned to the Doctor. “Turn off all the…things keeping it parked. Let the TARDIS fly itself. We both know it can.”  
  
Jack made a face and shook his head. “If you’re right and it really is just a shell then it can’t compensate for any error he might make, any shifts or changes in the walls of reality or flow of time. We could end up dead ourselves or stuck in the Void.”  
  
But the Doctor was already on his feet and racing around the console. “So get off if you like. But this ship’s heading out in exactly fifteen seconds and anyone still onboard goes with us.”   
  
Jack and Martha exchanged a questioning look. She was staying. Unless this ended the way they hoped, he was going to need someone and there was no guarantee he’d come back to Earth.   
  
“I can’t risk it. Someone has to stay here and defend this planet.” He pointed at the Doctor sternly as he backed towards the door. “If you find her, I expect to see both of you my Hub this afternoon. She still works for me.”  
  
“4…3…2…” the Doctor said loudly, hand hovering over the dematerialization switch. Jack grabbed the door handle and bolted out, slamming it shut behind him. Martha dropped to the floor and curled her fingers around the grating. “1.”  
  
She’d been correct in her assumption that this was going to be a violent ride. Jack hadn’t been kidding about the ship being unable to compensate for anything though she’d never realized just how much the TARDIS had done in the past. The lights flickered ominously around them and the grating of the rotor seemed louder than ever. It was difficult to hear one individual thud over the shuddering and roaring of the ship around them but she noticed the Doctor was on the floor as well, clinging to the leg of the pilot’s chair.   
  
The ship landed hard, tossing Martha’s lower body into the air and the metal bit into her fingers as she held on, and all the air rushed out of her as she was slammed down. But then the shaking stopped, the roaring died down, the lights settled, and the rotor fell silent. Martha lay there, gasping like a fish out of water, and slowly uncurled her sore fingers from the grating.  
  
The Doctor raised his head, similarly gasping for air, and he peered around the room anxiously before getting to his feet.  
  
“D’you know were we are?” Martha asked. He pulled the monitor around the console and studied the screen. She rose up to her knees and examined her hands. Her fingers were covered in red lines, some of which extended down to her palms, but none of them had broken the skin. She blew cool air on them gingerly.   
  
“Earth,” the Doctor said. “Relatively close to the date we left. …Just a few days before…” His voice was hushed, hopeful. “Approximately 44 degrees latitude, -124 degrees longitude. That’s…” He closed his eyes, mouthing to himself for a few seconds, then they snapped open. “The United States Northwest.”   
  
“Like…Oregon?”  
  
He stared at her, mouth agape, for five solid seconds. Then he was pushing off the console and racing for the door, feet thudding against the grating. He didn’t bother with his coat, which hung on its usual coral strut, and his hands scrambled uselessly on the handle for a few seconds like he couldn’t quite remember how to open it. Then he did.   
  
The Doctor flung the door open and found himself in a dense forest in the late morning or early afternoon, judging from the way the sun filtered through the trees. The air was light and fresh, definitely far from any towns or pollutants, and from the little ways the ground sloped, they were likely on the edge of mountains. Time buzzed around him like it had when the paradox was undone. Was it that day again?  
  
He stepped out of the TARDIS and raked his eyes across everything, searching for any sign of anyone. No humans had been here in some time, only animals.  
  
No Rose.   
  
He hadn’t realized that he’d allowed himself to hope until it fell away. And it _hurt_. It hurt so damn much that he wanted to scream. He didn’t know how he was supposed to keep going like this. He didn’t know _how_ to live without her anymore. The only thing that had kept him going during the last year was the knowledge he would see her again. Now he didn’t even have that.  
  
“Doctor?”   
  
The Doctor spun around and…there she was. Two feet away.   
  
Just…standing there next to the TARDIS, looking for all the word like nothing was wrong.   
  
Like she hadn’t spent half a year living it rough, died, and then spent the rest of the year as an incorporeal manifestation of the Bad Wolf. Her hair was the same soft shade of blonde, her eyes their normal brown, and she wore her blue bomber jacket, black shirt, dark jeans, and white trainers.   
  
She was blinking every few seconds and her chest rose and fell steadily with her breaths–Bad Wolf had done either when it suited her and not out of necessity. He could feel her body heat. He could feel her mind buzzing beneath the surface but not exposed and pulsing like it had been on the _Valiant._ He could see a flush in her cheeks, saw the way pieces of her hair fluttered in the wind.   
  
She was _alive_!   
  
He let out a loud laugh of delight and scooped her up off the ground, spinning her around out of sheer joy.   
  
Rose giggled near his ear, clinging to his shoulders, and caressed the back of his head. He set her down and his hands moved to her face, cradling it, then down her neck, shoulders, arms, sides, hips, then around and up her back just to prove he could. He cupped her face in his hands once again and pressed kisses everywhere he could: the apples of her cheeks, the tip of nose, her lips, her eyelids her chin, her forehead.   
  
Then he buried his face in her hair, whispering over and over, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” He didn’t know who he was thanking. The universe, maybe? Time, fate, death, or maybe Rose, or perhaps Bad Wolf herself. “Thank you. Thank you.”  
  
“Is this a dream?” Rose asked.  
  
He shook his head and pulled back so he could see her face. “Don’t think so. I haven’t slept in a month.”   
  
“But…then… How? Are you a future version of my Doctor? No, wait. You’ve got the TARDIS so you’re from the past, yeah? Are you here to, um, help?”   
  
“Help–what?” He frowned.   
  
Rose looked at him like he was mad. “My Doctor’s currently on the Valiant lookin’ about sixty years older and the TARDIS is–well. So you can’t be him. So where are you from?”  
  
Oh…dear. Oh dear. This was either reeaaally good or veeeeery bad. He let his arms drop and took a step back. “What…do you remember?”  
  
“I remember you getting turned into an old man and leaving you behind on the Valiant. Me an’ Martha have been traveling ever since like you told us to. But I can’t find her or–oh!” She smacked herself on the forehead. “That’s right. There was a camp here.” She told him, gesturing to the area around them. “We just sort of found it. Or, well, they found us.”  
  
“So you remember everything up to the camp in Oregon?” he checked. She nodded. “What’s the last thing you remember happening?”  
  
Rose opened her mouth wordlessly, closed it, and her eyes grew distant. “I was…playing with some kids…hide and seek. And then…” Her eyes flicked back and forth as if she was watching the scene play out before her. “Whistles started going off…and the…they were…” She gasped and turned around. “Oh my God! The UCFs!”  
  
The door of the ship creaked open and he heard Martha step out. “Doctor, is she–Rose! You’re okay!”  
  
Rose whipped around at the sound of her friend’s voice. “Martha, what happened? Where is everybody?”  
  
Martha froze next to the Doctor. “What do you mean?”  
  
“What happened to the camp that was right here? Why is it spring? And how are you with the Doctor? What’s going on?!”  
  
Martha swallowed. “Y-you remember the camp?”  
  
“Of course I remember the camp!”  
  
“Do you remember what happened…at the end?”  
  
“I remember the UCFs coming but after that it’s just a blur then…nothing.”  
  
The Doctor’s mind was racing through every possibility. He was missing important information about the minutes leading up to Rose’s death, but it wasn’t hard to take a guess. Rose would never kill the Master’s troops the way she had of her own volition. The Bad Wolf had to have had a role in it. It was understandable for her memories of the fight to be jumbled and confused and afterwards…well, one’s own death must be traumatizing on the psyche.  
  
The loss of her months spent as Bad Wolf was easily explained. She never remembered fully being the Bad Wolf unless prompted and even then, her memories were never complete.   
  
Though confused, Rose was not oblivious to the shock radiating from them. She looked between Martha and the Doctor warily. “What happened?”  
  
They could tell her what happened and leave it at that. No one else knew Bad Wolf had given him the bundle of memories to return to Rose should this very thing happen. She wouldn’t ever have to remember killing those people and then…dying. But Bad Wolf had trusted him to do this and even if she never remembered, he was almost certain the TARDIS would.   
  
“You…died,” Martha whispered.  
  
Rose blinked, face draining of blood. “I what?”  
  
“You died. Moran was going to shoot me but you pushed me out of the way.”  
  
“I’m…dead?” Rose looked down at herself and only then seemed to realize what she was wearing. She slowly raised her arms, turning them this way and that, staring. Trembling, she leaned forward to look at her stomach and legs and her fair fell in her face. A tiny cry tore it’s way from her throat as her hands flew to the blonde strands, holding them in front of her eyes, then let them drop.  
  
She looked up at the Doctor, shaking and completely distraught. “Help me,” she whimpered.   
  
“I will,” the Doctor promised and raised his hands. He took two steps forward and pressed his fingers to her temples. He eased himself into her flailing mind and brought forth the untouched bundle of memories.   
  
_I love you,_ he promised. _Remember that, no matter what you may see._  
  
And he transferred them to her.  
  
Rose’s mind began processing them immediately, assimilating the duplicate memories and reasserting ones that had been forgotten. He withdrew quickly to give her mind one less thing to worry about. The Doctor watched her carefully as he lowered his hands from her temples but all she did was stare blankly ahead.   
  
“What’d you do?” Martha whispered.  
  
“Bad Wolf gave me the memories from the last year in case Rose didn’t remember. I just gave them back.”  
  
“All of them?”  
  
“I assume.”  
  
Rose stiffened and deep within her eyes he saw flecks of gold begin to swirl in the chaotic dance of the vortex until they were shining brilliantly. Her lips parted and she inhaled slowly. _“Oh.”_  
  
Then she dropped like a sack of bricks. The Doctor lunged forward and caught her before she could hit the ground. Martha was a split second behind him. She helped him steady her so he could scoop her up in his arms, then ran to get the door. Rose’s eyes were wide and staring, unfocused, still glowing with time. Only her heart thudding erratically in her chest reassured him that she hadn’t spontaneously expired.  
  
The moment he brought Rose inside the ship, her breathing hitched. He carried her up the ramp quickly and when he passed the console Rose’s body began to glow brilliantly. Golden light seemed to seep from every pore. He very nearly dropped her in shock.   
  
From Rose’s mouth came a beautiful, haunting melody in a voice that was not hers. It filled the air, washing over him, and resonating down to his soul. The light emitting from Rose’s body floated and soared around the room and began to seep into the walls. A rather large bit of light drifted up to level with his head. There was a split second where he thought he might have seen a face in there but it was gone immediately and he could not remember anything about how it had looked, or what species it might have been. The light floated around him, brushing against his body, flitting across the backs of his hands and through his hair, before it shot off like a bullet towards the console where it disappeared.  
  
The singing ended, Rose stopped glowing, and finally her eyes slipped shut.


	74. New Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Penultimate chapter

The Doctor swore both his hearts stopped beating for a horrifying moment. He was _sure_ she’d died. That she’d only been alive because of the TARDIS within her and now that it was gone, so was she. But then she inhaled through her nose and her chest began to rise and fall slowly with breath and he nearly wept with relief. As it was, a few tears escaped his eyes as his lips pressed against her forehead.  
  
Around them, the TARDIS’s humming had finally begun to sound like normal. The rotor glowed brighter and bobbed up and down lazily within its column.  
  
“She’ll be fine,” Martha soothed from his shoulder. “I think she just needs to readjust. Come on, let’s get her to her room.”  
  
He nodded. “Right. You’re right. Of course you’re right. You’re a bloody amazing woman, haven’t told you that in a long time, but you are. Everything you did, everything you’ve _been_ doing–”  
  
“Later,” she said, though she was beaming at his words.  
  
The Doctor carried Rose towards their room and Martha was right on his heels. Though she needn’t have bothered, really. He could take care of her himself. But they’d been through hell together. Of course Martha would want to ensure Rose was well and truly okay. Rose’s death had probably been very hard on her, after all, especially with the knowledge that the bullet had been intended for Martha.  
  
Martha held the door open for the Doctor and stood in the doorway as he laid Rose down on the bed. He sat down next to her and brushed a few errant strands of hair away her face. She looked peaceful enough but there was something…sad about her.  
  
“Will you be alright now?” Martha asked.  
  
The Doctor nodded without looking up.  
  
“Good.” There was a smile in her voice. “I’ll be asleep in my room if you need me.”  
  
He heard the door shut, cutting off the stream of light from the outside. The lights in the room came on dimly a moment later, just enough that he could see, but not enough to disturb her.  
  
He thought back to a year ago and realized she’d been wearing these clothes for a while now. She didn’t think he would mind if he got her into something comfier. She’d done it for him before. So he stood up from their bed and headed into the closet. He chose a loose-fitting, pale yellow summer dress, figuring she’d like something that wasn’t restrictive. Martha had confessed to him some days ago that it was strange to wear a dress and sandals again after being confined to trousers, boots and thick jackets for so long, but that she enjoyed the feeling of freedom it brought.  
  
He set the dress on the pillow next to Rose and began unzipping her blue jacket. He slid it off of her left arm, then her right, and carefully eased her back off the bed with one hand while pulling the jacket from beneath her with the other. He dropped it to the floor without ceremony. Then he removed her boots and socks, smiling at the way her toes twitched at the sudden rush of cool air. Next he removed her shirt, then her trousers, but he left her undergarments on, not sure if she’d be comfortable with him removing those. Well, while she was unconscious at least.  
  
It took a bit of work to maneuver her limp body into the summer dress, and then under the duvet and sheets, but he finally managed. Unsure what to do next but unable to leave her, he stood over her silently for a while. Then he shucked his blue jacket and toed off his trainers. Just in a t-shirt and suit pants, he crawled onto the bed next to her. He slid under the covers and curled his body around her, pressing his face to her hair.  
  
Oh how he’d _missed_ her.  
  
Rose slept for just over three hours, two full sleep cycles. He didn’t leave her side once, which gave him plenty of time to think. No wonder none of their scans had been able to detect her. If she hadn’t even been aware of what she was wearing, then she couldn’t have been awake very long before they found her, which meant they’d gone back to the day when the paradox ended. She’d been long gone before Mr. Smith ran the first sweep.  
  
Every so often her brow furrowed and he’d lean over and gently kiss the creases in her skin until they smoothed. He wondered what she was dreaming about. Was it just a dream or was her mind replaying all her memories?  
  
As she began to stir, the Doctor slid his fingers up and down the skin of her arm. She sighed contently, snuggling deeper into her pillow, but he knew she waking up.  
  
“I can feel you,” she whispered through barely-moving lips. Her eyes blinked open. “You’re touching me.”  
  
“I am,” he confirmed. Uncertainty curled in his belly. “Is that okay?”  
  
She lifted her arm, stilling his fingers, and touched his face. “I can touch you.” Her fingers stroked back and forth gently.  
  
“You can.”  
  
She slid her fingers through his hair a few times before pressing her palm against the back of his head and drawing him closer. He leaned his head forward obligingly, eyes slipping shut as she skimmed her lips and nose along his cheek. She inhaled deeply.  
  
“I can smell you.”  
  
She pressed her lips to his and parted them almost immediately, running her tongue along his bottom lip. “I can taste you.”  
  
“Are you alright?” he murmured around her lips.  
  
Rose drew back and searched his face. “Do you know what it’s like to have no body?” she asked after a moment. “I know you can change them but have you ever experienced being without one?”  
  
The Doctor shook his head.  
  
“There’s no touch. No smell. No sense of temperature. You could stand in the middle of a tornado and not even be buffeted. Sit in the shallows and not feel the waves moving by. You could go from the desert to the arctic in a second and not feel a thing. Fly higher than the tip of Mt. Everest and not even feel how thin the air is. You could stare at a feast and not be–” She stopped mid-sentence, eyes widening, and looked down at herself. “Hungry. I’m…hungry.”  
  
Rose laughed and lifted her head. “I’m _hungry_. Because I’ve got a body that needs food and sleep and jumpers and blankets to keep warm and hair that needs brushing and skin that needs washing–”  
  
When he noticed she was starting to shake, the Doctor tightened his grip around her. “Shhhh,” he urged gently. “It’s alright.”  
  
He hadn’t realized (hadn’t even considered really) what a shock it would be for her to go from being a ghost to a human again. She’d been deprived of things that were an essential part of life yet hadn’t felt any repercussions like she should’ve and now, suddenly, she needed them all once more. Of course it was overwhelming.  
  
Rose jerked against his arms. “Please let go.”  
  
Oh and if that didn’t sting. He obeyed reluctantly, scooting away from her for her good measure. She pushed herself up into a sitting position, tossed the covers aside, and swung her legs around the edge of the bed. She started to stand but then fell to her knees beside the bed. He scrambled across the mattress, ready to help her, but she was already getting to her feet.  
  
She took a few steps away from the bed where nothing could touch her and stood there with her back to him, head ducked. He watched her shoulders rise and fall slowly. Idiot. He’d just realized she was in some sort of shock from being able to feel things again, and the first thing he did was cuddle her up so tightly she could barely move. “I’m sorry,” he apologized.  
  
Rose nodded and croaked, “It’s just so much at once.”  
  
“I know. I’m so sorry.”  
  
“Can I…can I eat?”  
  
The Doctor sat up. “Can you?”  
  
“I need to.”  
  
“Then we’ll go get you some food.” He said simply.  
  
They walked down the corridors together in silence and he was careful not to touch her except for when she stumbled over her own feet. There was…so much they needed to discuss and he wasn’t sure how to even begin. More often than not she was the one who instigated the difficult talks but she was just as lost as he was. He wanted so badly to help her but he didn’t even know how.  
  
No, wait. Yes he did. He sent the idea to the TARDIS who hummed in approval. “Rose, change of plans. Follow me.”  
  
“But I’m hungry…” she protested, looking and sounding very much like a girl half her age.  
  
“You can have food in just a bit, I promise. But I know something that can help you.”  
  
He hadn’t been to this room in years. Hadn’t had a need to. His regeneration from his Eighth to Ninth body had been difficult but not traumatic enough for the Zero Room. And, really, he hadn’t had time. He should have spent the first day or so of this regeneration inside of it while his body recovered but Rose hadn’t known. That was his fault. When he opened the door to the empty white room, he was pleased to see it hadn’t changed much since he last saw it. The round things in the walls were gone–he never could quite figure out what those things were–but the basic structure remained the same. He should’ve brought her here first.  
  
The Doctor motioned for her to enter. Rose glanced at him then took a step inside. Then another. And he immediately noticed the change. Her entire body relaxed and she let out a little sigh of relief.  
  
His lips slid up into a smile and he stepped inside. “Better?”  
  
“Much. What is this place?”  
  
“The Zero Room. Every TARDIS had one. This room is sort of…separate from the rest of the universe. There’s not really a way I can explain it that you’d understand. Not without knowledge of at least several advanced forms of physics and other sciences,” he added at her affronted look. “But you your mind will have a chance to heal in here. And, if you want, I could teach you to levitate. I think you’d be able to pull it off.”  
  
“Levitate?”  
  
He nodded and walked towards the center of the room. “Watch.” And then he floated several feet off the ground.  
  
She gasped, wide-eyed. “I think I’d like that.”  
  
He dropped back down to the floor. “Alright, then. Do as you like. Sit, walk around, or lay down–doesn’t matter. I’ll bring us some food. And tea. Tea will help you as well. Just make sure you don’t leave.”  
  
“No worries there.” Rose assured him as she settled down on the ground. The Doctor stared at her for a moment longer, drinking in her image, then turned and left the room.  
  
The Zero Room was only a temporary respite so Rose could recover. They’d have to face reality soon enough. He wasn’t looking forward to it.  
  


~*~

  
  
It was several days before they returned to Martha’s time. The Doctor set them down on a beach on an island somewhere in the past and parked. The Doctor promised Martha she’d be home soon but she wasn’t in a hurry. She knew she wouldn’t be able to depart without knowing Rose and the Doctor would be okay without her. She had her own problems but she also had her own family to help her. The two of them, the moment they took off, they’d only have each other and an entire universe depending on them.  
  
Rose was having difficulties recovering from the sudden influx of memories and having a body again. Though her body didn’t know any different, her mind did and that was enough to make normal human behaviors strange. It was a good thing her body blinked and breathed on its own, and let her know when it was time for other banal tasks like using the loo, eating, and sleeping. She had trouble remembering other ordinary things like walking. More than once she’d leaned forward, expecting to float in the direction she wanted, only to remember too late that she couldn’t do that anymore, and she ended up on the floor. But the worst part was on the first day when she forgot she couldn’t pass through objects anymore and walked face-first into a wall.  
  
The poor Doctor about had a hearts attack.  
  
They spent a few hours on the beach each day to help her get used to different sensations in a safe environment. The different textures and densities of sand under her feet, the change in temperature between the wind, sun, and water. The heat of the sun beating down on her back. She sat on the edge of the water and let it ebb and flow around her, then went further in and let the waves push against her, rocking her body back and forth and occasionally knocking her over. Every time she took a deep breath of the salty air, she smiled, even when one of those big breaths ended up in her swallowing some saltwater and throwing up.  
  
When they weren’t actively doing something, Rose spent her time in the Zero Room, which the Doctor promised was perfectly fine. The pair of them slept in there too, on a mattress the TARDIS provided. Martha initially expressed concerns over the Doctor’s lack of sleep but when Rose settled down to sleep the first night, he did too, and he was still out the next morning when she awoke. He was considerate enough to not immediately try to spoon her when they lay down to sleep, and even when she invited him to, he didn’t make himself into a protective cocoon around her. Instead she opted to be the big spoon. It let her offer him comfort, and if she felt the need to move, she’d be able to.  
  
Rose particularly enjoyed being in the Zero Room. It soothed her mind. Made the stress of everything…less.  
  
They spent a lot of their time alone talking about things. Not the real, deep stuff like their traumas and emotions. No, that would take time. But other things, like people she’d met during her travels. The people who’d known him in the past, people he’d saved. Elliot. She told him about the people in Oregon and why she’d decided they were worth it. How she’d learned to make herself seen and heard.  
  
He talked about his friendship with the Joneses, and how K9 had thought to entertain him one day by racing around the console room with the Doctor’s sonic as hostage. When she asked about her necklace on his hand, he told her how it had come to be there before returning it. Her TARDIS key, however, seemed to have vanished.  
  
The Doctor told her early on that she’d given back the part of the TARDIS that been within her, though he needn’t have bothered. She’d known the moment she’d awoken. The place where the TARDIS had been was gone, and the link had returned to what it had been. She was much more aware of it than before, able to see the bindings that held them together as well as the area in between that glowed. Bad Wolf. It was comforting knowing She was still there.  
  
But without the TARDIS in her mind, her abilities were gone. Or so she’d believed until she cut herself on a sharp seashell and watched the cut close over the span of about a minute.  
  
Many of her memories of being Bad Wolf were repressed, her mind’s way of coping and handling them, but every so often something would trigger a memory and she could recall it in perfect detail. The sudden healing of her skin brought back several memories.  
  
The energy was still within her, had been in her since the inception of Bad Wolf, but it hadn’t become active until the Huon remnants inside her had been triggered and stirred things up in her systems. It flowed from the golden place where Bad Wolf slept, and now that she was aware of it, she could feel it humming though her if she focused hard enough. But she could no longer channel the energy to project it outwards and she tried for hours. The light never appeared in her palms and, try as she might, she couldn’t get a tiny little cut on Martha’s arm to heal. It was disheartening.  
  
While she was testing herself, another of her memories awoke, bringing with it knowledge that left her uneasy now as it had then. This energy was an integral part of her body, healing any damage and regenerating her body, and it would continue to do its job for as long as Bad Wolf existed.  
  
Which meant she was going to live for a long time.  
  
She wasn’t sure how to tell him. She knew he wanted her to stay with him but…he’d said that when he was expecting her to live maybe eighty or ninety years. How would he react when she told him eighty had suddenly become…eight hundred or more? She wanted to believe he’d be ecstatic, but there was always the chance he wouldn’t. So she put it off.  
  
They also worked on her telepathy. It, like her other abilities, had been curbed substantially. She could no longer stretch and flex it like it were simply another limb, nor could she enter Martha’s mind, but with a little practice she was easily able to slot it into place next to the Doctor’s so they could speak. It made her hopeful that they could one day share a telepathic bond like the one she’d discussed with him in her room in the Hub. She knew she would very much enjoy having his mind as a constant presence in the back of hers. She was feeling very empty without the TARDIS actively there every second of the day. Once upon a time she had abhorred the thought of another being anywhere near her mind, including the sentient ship.  
  
How far she’d come.  
  
So, during one of their telepathy sessions, she mentioned the bond idea and his face blossomed into that same awe-struck grin she remembered from a year before. “You still want that?” he asked.  
  
Rose nodded. “Yes. My head’s…empty without her there. I can’t imagine what it’s like for you. And, plus, well, I _want_ to be bonded to you like that.”  
  
His smile was bright enough to outshine the sun.  
  
She was getting back into the swing of things fairly quickly and she was quite pleased with herself. Having a body wasn’t new to her so, really, all she needed was some readjusting. Flying though…that she missed. Levitating in the Zero Room or floating around in the antigravity room weren’t the same.  
  
At first she found it awkward being around Martha. They’d spent a lot of time together both before and…after. Near the end, Bad Wolf had said some things. Rather, snarled some things. She thought Martha had learned the difference between her and Bad Wolf, but she wasn’t sure. So she apologized.  
  
“What for?” Martha asked incredulously. “It wasn’t you.”  
  
“No but it–it _was_ me.”  
  
“But not just you. And it was stupid of me to forget that. I mean it wasn’t like you made it easy in the first place. That night, though, I was an idiot. You could see the bigger picture and I only saw what was in front of me.”  
  
“But you had every right to be upset,” Rose insisted. “And I lashed out.”  
  
“Don’t worry. I forgave you. Though, I didn’t get a chance to ask. What’d you think of the CIA cover story I gave Tom and Docherty?”  
  
Rose rolled her eyes. “‘The Ghost.’ I still can’t believe you did that.”  
  
After that, things weren’t so awkward anymore. She was upset when Martha told her she’d be staying behind when they went back to Earth, but not really surprised. Martha had wanted to visit home before all this, and she didn’t blame her for being tired of traveling after what she’d been through. And she promised to get the Doctor to take them back to Earth before the week was out. In the meantime, she wouldn’t have to worry about them landing anywhere dangerous. The TARDIS wouldn’t allow it.  
  
They spent the third day packing her room up. Everything she’d gathered during her travels, all the clothes and items she wanted to take with her were loaded into a large suitcase and a duffle bag. It gave them plenty of time to talk, and Rose was interested to hear what happened during the two weeks she’d missed. Martha told her about Sarah Jane and K9, which made Rose smile, and that they needed to let her know she was alive. She told her that she’d found Tom Milligan.  
  
“Really?” Rose raised her eyebrows in interest. “You’re going to give it a go with him?”  
  
“Hey, come on now, I just said I found him. It’s a bit early for that. He doesn’t even know I exist.”  
  
“ _Yet_ ,” Rose added, setting the shirt she was holding into the suitcase. “Just so you know, I was in the back seat of his truck almost the whole time.”  
  
Martha’s eyes widened and she blushed. “Um…”  
  
“Uh huh,” said Rose as Martha smirked. “I don’t think he’ll be that different. I expect a call after the first date.”  
  
Martha had also apparently paid a visit to Professor Docherty as well. She gave her flowers and told her she was forgiven. Of course she didn’t remember anything either but, still, the gesture made Rose smile. Martha hadn’t let the year ruin her.  
  
That night Rose and the Doctor moved out of the Zero Room and back into theirs. As they were lying down to go to sleep, Rose snuggled up close to his front and pressed her face into his chest. For a moment he was utterly silent and still. Then he hummed quietly and slid his arms around her. She exhaled in relief. She’d missed this, but she would be forever grateful to him for not pushing her into anything until she was ready.  
  
That was when she finally told him, in the dark of their room as they snuggled together under the sheets. “What if I told you that I could stay with you forever?”  
  
“Then I’d believe you,” he murmured into her hair.  
  
“And what if I told you that I meant your forever and not just mine.”  
  
The Doctor slowly raised his head and she rolled over to face him. She could see the shock on his face through the gloom in the room. But she wouldn’t be the one to break the silence.  
  
“How?” he finally whispered.  
  
“My healing is…regenerative.” He gaped at her and she went on quickly. “I can’t regenerate like you can but the energy in me it’s…keeping my body from withering.”  
  
“But you…when did you realize?”  
  
“The other day. Healing myself triggered a few memories. Stuff Bad Wolf saved for me. I think it started when we met Donna but it wasn’t stopping aging, just slowing it. But now? I don’t think I’ve aged since my last December with Torchwood when all this really showed up.”  
  
“B-but you died…”  
  
“I used up my energy on other people. Can’t do that anymore. So it all focuses on me now. I’m not immortal so I can die, but it’s just…not gonna be as easy as it was before. So it looks like I’m gonna be with you for a long time.”  
  
The Doctor was absolutely still. He wasn’t even breathing. She swallowed back the fear rising within and propped herself up on her arm. “Is that…is that alright?”  
  
Instead of answering, he leaned down and kissed her, running his tongue along her lips. She opened her mouth to let him in and groaned softly. They made love in the dark for the first time since the Hub. In those furtive moments she was able to see just how much the last year had broken him. How her death had nearly shattered him. She saw it in his eyes, felt it in the desperate way he clutched her to him, and devoured her. He’d been so concerned for her that he’d barely had time to heal himself. So she kissed and touched him everywhere, letting her hands and lips soothe him in a way she hadn’t been able to before, every kiss and touch reassuring him that she was with him again.  
  
But he never answered her question and she didn’t see him until the next morning when he strolled into the kitchen while she and Martha were having breakfast. He informed them that there was no reason to put it off any longer and they would be taking Martha home, assuming she still wanted to go. She did.  
  
After breakfast, he landed them in Martha's mother’s back garden. Martha went out first, pulling her suitcase with one hand and holding her duffle bag over her other shoulder. Rose heard her greet her mum and dad. The Doctor went next, poking his head out comically before bounding out of the TARDIS.  
  
Rose had never really known Francine Jones and their first meeting hadn’t exactly been under the best circumstances, nor had first impressions been very good on either side. So when Rose stepped out of the TARDIS behind the Doctor, she was quite surprised to see the other woman start crying and then throw her arms around Rose. Rose glanced at the Doctor and Martha and shock. The Doctor shrugged but Martha smiled and nodded encouragingly.  
  
She hugged Francine back. “Uh, hi.”  
  
Francine sniffed, squeezing her tightly, then took a step back. “You don’t know how happy I am to see you alive.”  
  
Martha’s dad, Clive, shook her hand. “Clive Jones. Nice to finally meet you…and see you’re alive.”  
  
Tish hugged her as well, face full of relief and delight, and murmured just two words, “Thank you.”  
  
And, then, just like that…it was time for them to go. They really had no reason to stay and Rose was due to report back to Torchwood. Temporarily, of course, but she had to pack up her life there and make sure it was okay for her to go. She never planned on staying forever, only until the Doctor came back, and Jack had been well aware of that when he’d officially hired her. But she knew she couldn’t just leave loose ends lying around and she suspected he’d like to keep her on the payroll as a ‘consultant’ or something. The Doctor wanted to get everything done and get off world ASAP.  
  
The three of them stood outside the TARDIS, Rose and the Doctor with their backs to the ship and Martha with her back to her home–and family waiting inside. Much like when they’d first invited her to come with him. Martha wore her red leather jacket, the Doctor had on his brown suit and coat, and Rose’s shirt was even green, darker green but green nonetheless.  
  
“So I guess this is it, then,” the Doctor said. He had on a brave face but Rose could tell he was upset. Usually when he said goodbye it was for good. Well, not this time.  
  
Martha laughed, shaking her head. “I don’t even know what to say. I always knew I wasn’t going to travel forever, but now that it’s actually time I can’t–”  
  
“I know.” Rose smiled. “We’ll miss you.”  
  
“I’ll miss both of you, too. But it’s time. It really is. It’s been amazing and I wouldn’t have missed it for anything–though that last year I could’ve done without. But the universe was worth everything. And I will never be able to thank you enough for showing it to me.”  
  
“It was my pleasure,” the Doctor assured her. “Besides, after everything, you don’t need to thank me. If you ever need anything, give us a call.”  
  
“Or just give us a call whenever you want.” Rose said. “Either way, we’ll come.”  
  
“I will,” Martha said. She stepped forward, arms wide, and hugged them both. Rose squeezed her as tightly as she could and felt the Doctor doing the same. “Oh, God, I’m gonna miss you two,” she grunted. “But I can’t breathe!”  
  
They let her go quickly. Rose laughed apologetically.  
  
“Oh, I almost forgot!” Martha held up her finger, reaching into her pocket with her other hand, and pulled out her TARDIS key.  
  
“No, keep it,” the Doctor told her. “That’s yours. If it ever gets hot and starts glowing, that means we’re here in this time. Well, versions of us that coincide with you anyway.”  
  
Martha smiled, tucking the key back into her pocket. “I’ll remember that.” She looked between them both and laughed again. “Alright, both of you, get out of here before I start crying.”  
  
“Oh, now, we can’t have that.” The Doctor backed towards his ship, pushing the door open, and stepped inside.  
  
Rose gripped Martha’s hand tightly for a moment and grinned at her. “We’ll see you later, Martha. And don’t forget, I expect that phone call.” She squeezed her hand then let go and backed into the ship.  
  
Martha stood there alone in the back garden of her mum’s house, watching as the door to the place she’d once called home shut in front of her. There was something very final about it. A chapter of her life was ending and though she would see the people from it and repeat some activities from it, things would never be the same. And she was okay with that. For a time, Martha Jones had been a traveler and now she was finally ready to stop and put her feet up. She had her career as a doctor in front of her, med school to finish, and a family that, for all its faults, she loved dearly and she needed. Just as they needed her.  
  
So when the wheezing and groaning filled the air and the TARDIS began to fade in and out of existence, she smiled and watched it go. Only once the sound of the universe had faded away did she turn around and walk inside. She didn’t look back. 


	75. Days to Come

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wow. Just…wow. I can’t believe this story is finally over. I started working on this in September of my freshman year of college and now I’m preparing to enter my junior year. I’ve spent the last two years procrastinating on homework with this thing!!! It always feels strange when I finish a long story or project. I’m relieved to be finished but at the same time I want to hold on and never let go! But I’m not finished with this ‘verse yet so it’s not like it’s goodbye or anything.
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks to all my readers, whether you’ve been here since the prologue or you found this story the day I posted the final chapter, and stuck with it even when I did horrible things and hinted at things even more unspeakable.
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> Special thanks to WhoinWhoville, my wonderful beta from chapter 50 and on, and hopefully for further installments in this verse, and Kryalla Orchid for offering advice and helping me plan and plot (particularly the Human Nature arc). And thank you to anyone and everyone who's submitted any sort of fanart. I love you lots ^-^
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> Okay, I’ll shut up now and let you get on with reading. Be sure to keep an eye out for the next installments.

  
Rose stood at the top of the ramp, staring at the doorway as the ship dematerialized and they left their dear friend behind. “Is it always that hard?” she asked.  
  
Behind her, the Doctor stopped fiddling with the console. “Not always. Depends on the person, the circumstances of, well, everything. But it can be very hard, yes.”  
  
“Suppose…I’ll have to get used to it, then.” She turned around, watching him carefully. He still hadn’t outright told her how he felt about her staying with him for the rest of her very long life.  
  
“Mmm,” he agreed with a nod. He walked towards her slowly, with his hands in his pockets, dragging his Chucks against the grating. “But it gets easier. Even when it’s hard, it won’t be quite as hard as it could be. Some you won’t miss much, others you’ll miss more. Some you’ll never want to contact again and others, others you’ll give them your mobile number and demand weekly updates. Or you’ll want to. Maybe you will, maybe you won’t.” He removed his hands from his pockets and grasped hers gently in between them. “The point is, you’ll learn to let them go. The ones who part on their own terms, you accept that they have their own lives to lead and you let them get on with it. Those who…don’t…you mourn them…but, again, you eventually let them go.”  
  
“And was that what you would’ve done with me?”  
  
The Doctor sighed and looked down at their joined hands. “If you had chosen to leave, if you ever do, I will let you go. But–”  
  
An alarm she’d never heard before began blaring out of nowhere and the whole room quaked and up was down and down was up and Rose felt like she was going to be sick. Something was pressing…pressing, pressing, two into one and _no that’s not right!_  
  
She blacked out for a second and when she came to, the Doctor was a few feet away, hollering at the ship. “Stop it! …What was that all about, eh?” He knocked on the rotor. She raised her head, blinking her eyes open. Something was wrong. Some things were too sharp, others too blurry, the colors just too intense. “Eh? Rose, you okay?”  
  
“Right, just settle down now.” An unfamiliar voice commanded in a very cultured accent and Rose was suddenly very preoccupied with the strange man standing next to the console, messing with the controls like he knew what he was doing. He was older, maybe in his fifties, with blonde hair that was nearly gray, and wearing a very odd outfit. A cream colored jacket with red accents, matching trousers with red stripes all around, a lighter sweater and oxford underneath, and a hat on his head. But strangest of all was the piece of celery pinned to his lapel.  
  
He and the Doctor bumped into each other as they worked around the console.  
  
“Oh, excuse me,” the Doctor said.  
  
“So sorry,” the man apologized. They stepped around each other without pausing their work. The penny dropped for the Doctor almost immediately and his head snapped up. The man looked up a second after, shock registering on his face.  
  
“What?” the Doctor gasped.  
  
“What?” the man echoed.  
  
“D-Doctor?” Rose stammered quietly.  
  
Both of their heads turned towards her and her jaw went slack. “What?” they asked simultaneously. Then they looked at each other.  
  
Then the other man (Doctor?) pushed the Doctor out of the way and bustled over to her side and knelt down. “Are you alright?”  
  
“Um,” she squeaked. No, actually. She felt as if she were being pressed together on all sides, like she was trying to fit into a space meant for a person half her size.  
  
“Here, let me help you.” The man grasped her arm gently, but firmly, and helped Rose to her feet. She swayed slightly and the Doctor moved forward to steady her with his arm around her shoulders.  
  
“Oh, I don’t like this,” she moaned.  
  
“Easy,” he soothed. “It’ll be over soon.”  
  
The man looked between them crossly. “Who are you? And what are you doing on my TARDIS?”  
  
“Your what?” Rose squawked suddenly very alert.  
  
“My TARDIS. My ship. You’re on it.”  
  
She glanced at the Doctor who rather seemed to be enjoying himself. “Who are you?” she asked the man.  
  
“I’m the Doctor.”  
  
“Like hell!”  
  
“No, he is,” her Doctor insisted. “And good for him. Good for brilliant old him.”  
  
“Is there something wrong with you?” the other (Doctor????) demanded.  
  
“Oh there it goes!” Her Doctor pointed, grinning down at her. “The frown-y face, I remember that one! Mind you….bit saggier than it ought to be. Hair’s a bit grayer. That’s ‘cos of me, though, the two of us together shorted out the time differential. Should all snap back into place when we get you back home,” he added to the older…younger…other Doctor who was patting his cheeks in concern. Apparently vanity wasn’t a new thing for him after all.  
  
Rose’s head was starting to pound and having another regeneration of the Doctor in the room wasn’t helping. “So…this is…a younger…Doctor?”  
  
The Doctor seemed to realize how much trouble she was having because his eyes tightened. He shifted his grip and guided her over to the jump seat. “Yep. Practically still in the cradle.”  
  
“I beg your pardon?” the other Doctor sputtered as Rose eased down onto the seat. “I’ll have you know that I am well over a thousand years old–”  
  
Her Doctor winced, knowing he was busted, when Rose arched an eyebrow at him. “Oh, really? And which regeneration is this, then, Doctor?”  
  
“Fifth,” hers admitted while rubbing the back of his neck. She smirked at him before lowering her head as a spasm rippled through her.  
  
“How do you know so much?” the other–fifth–Doctor demanded. He looked around and for the first time seemed to realize where he was and frowned again. “What have you done? You’ve…changed the desktop theme. What is this, coral?”  
  
Her Doctor shrugged. “Well…”  
  
“It’s worse than the leopard skin,” he snapped.  
  
Rose glanced at her Doctor. “Leopard skin?”  
  
“Don’t ask. Reeaaally don’t.”  
  
“Hmm. Well, I love it how it is now,” Rose informed the other Doctor.  
  
“Yes, well, if you ever find yourself in the position of owning your own TARDIS, you can decorate it as you like,” the other Doctor replied, pulling out a pair of half-moon spectacles.  
  
“Oooh! There they come!” Her Doctor laughed and gave a little hop. “The brainy specs! You don’t even need them, you just think they make you look a bit clever.”  
  
Rose’s stomach clenched painfully and she doubled over, gripping the seat with one hand to keep herself from falling off. “Ah! Ow, ow, ow. I, uh, I don’t mean to alarm anyone,” she panted, “but we’ve got a problem.”  
  
“Are you ill?” the other Doctor asked.  
  
An alarm began to blare and both Doctors turned to the console. Hers went to look at the monitor, while the other bent over the controls again. “That’s an alert,” said the other. “Level five. Indicates a temporal collision. It’s like two TARDISes have merged–”  
  
“Oh, that explains it,” Rose muttered. Her Doctor glanced up at her, face tight with concern, but otherwise he seemed perfectly at ease. Maybe he’d already worked out whatever was going on. Or, no, wait a minute. This other Doctor was a younger version of him so he probably could remember how events had occurred. No wonder he was so calm, concern for her aside. He knew how it all turned out.  
  
“–but there’s definitely only one TARDIS present! Looks like two time zones at war in the heart of the TARDIS. …That’s a paradox. Could blow a hole in the space time continuum the size of…”  
  
Her Doctor nonchalantly pushed the monitor around for the other Doctor to see. It beeped once.  
  
“…Well, actually, the exact size of Belgium,” the other Doctor reported unenthusiastically. “That’s a bit undramatic, isn’t it?”  
  
“Not if you’re Belgium,” Rose pointed out.  
  
The Fifth Doctor chuckled. “I suppose not.”  
  
Her Doctor held out the sonic screwdriver as the other Doctor turned back to the console. “Need this?”  
  
“No, I’m fine.”  
  
He rolled his eyes. “Oh no, of course you mostly went hands free, didn’t you?” He gave the screwdriver a little flip and tucked it away. “It’s like ‘Hey, I’m the Doctor, I can save the universe using a kettle and some string, and look at me I’m wearing a vegetable.’” He finished with a pointed and decidedly unimpressed look at his younger self’s lapels.  
  
Rose giggled then winced as her stomach clenched again.  
  
Five looked between the pair of them suspiciously and approached his older self. “Who are you?” he demanded.  
  
“Take a look.”  
  
The other Doctor did and his eyes widened. “Oh…oh no.”  
  
“Oh yes.”  
  
“You’re…oh no, you’re…”  
  
“Here it comes.” He nodded, grinning stupidly. “Yep, yep, I am.”  
  
“A _fan_!” the other Doctor spat in disgust and turned back to the console as it began beeping again.  
  
“Yep!” His grin immediately turned into a petulant frown as he realized what his younger self had said. “What?”  
  
“Level ten now! This is bad. Two minutes to Belgium!”  
  
“What do you mean ‘a fan’?” her Doctor protested. “I’m not just a fan, I’m you.”  
  
“Ok you’re my biggest fan,” he allowed. He stepped away from the console and sauntered over to him. “Look, it’s perfectly understandable. I go zooming around space and time saving planets, fighting monsters, and being, well, let’s be honest, pretty sort of marvelous…and naturally every now and then people notice me…start up their little groups. What do you call yourselves, eh?”  
  
“Oh, for the love of God.” Rose grumbled then barked sharply, “Doctor!” They both turned and she gestured between them. “Fifth, meet Tenth.”  
  
The younger Doctor gawked at her. Rose’s entire body suddenly seized up, she let out a howl of pain, and fell off the jump seat. She hit the grating, unforgiving as ever, hard enough that she wouldn’t be surprised if she bruised. At the same moment, the Cloister Bell began chiming–the TARDIS’s way of telling them to get a move on. When she opened her eyes, both Doctors were kneeling over her.  
  
“What on Gallifrey is the matter with the poor girl?”  
  
“She’s bonded with the TARDIS. Long story, don’t ask. Only way to help her is to fix this.”  
  
She watched them blearily as they raced around the console, flipping switches, rotating knobs, and pressing buttons. She closed her eyes again and focused on breathing through the searing pains in her body.  
  
“So, do you mind explaining to me, why we’re about to detonate a black hole strong enough to swallow the entire universe?”  
  
“Um, yeah, my fault. I’ve been rebuilding the TARDIS. Things have been kind of…hectic lately; forgot to put the shields back up. Your TARDIS and my TARDIS–well, the same TARDIS, different points in its own time stream–collided and, oops there you go, end of the universe. Butterfingers. BUT! I know exactly how this all works out. So, while I do this, will you make sure she keeps breathing?”  
  
She felt the Doctor’s hands on her arm and shoulder while the other worked the console.  
  
“What are you–no! You’ll blow up the TARDIS!”  
  
Rose gasped, a rough guttural sound, and raised her head. “What?!”  
  
“It’s the only way out,” her Doctor insisted, glancing at her intently. “Trust me, I remember this.” She heard the rapid beats of his fingers against one of the keyboards. “…Rose, I’m so sorry, but if I don’t do this–”  
  
The TARDIS hummed an assent in her mind, but it was also laced with apprehension. Oh, this was gonna be rough. “Do it,” she panted.  
  
The Doctor pressed his lips into a thin line then slammed his hand against a lever.  
  
Her eyes rolled back in her head. White heat roared through her body for a single, agonizing second that seemed to last forever and yet no time at all. And then she gasped, eyes flinging open, and she sat straight up. Hands steadied her as she focused on pulling air into her suddenly very hollow lungs.  
  
“Supernova and a black hole simultaneously,” her Doctor crowed. “Explosion cancels out implosion–”  
  
“Matter stays constant,” the younger Doctor finished in awe.  
  
“You alright, Rose?”  
  
Rose nodded. It still felt like she was being squished but the pain was gone. She got to her feet using the younger Doctor for support. Her Doctor came over and gripped her upper arms, giving her a once over. “Don’t worry, I’m fine,” she assured him.  
  
“Good.” He kissed her forehead, eliciting a quiet, “Oh,” of surprise from his younger self.  
  
Rose smiled at him. “Hello. Sorry, I’m not usually like that.”  
  
“Who are you?” he asked softly, staring at her with curiosity and amazement.  
  
“Rose Tyler.”  
  
“But you’re not…” The Fifth Doctor shook his head. “We’re not…are we?”  
  
Rose’s smile stretched into a full blown, tongue-between-teeth grin, then she stood on her tippy toes and kissed the younger Doctor’s lips. A second later, she pulled back and her Doctor wrapped his arms around her, pulling her tightly against his chest.  
  
“My Rose. Get your own.”  
  
A trilling alert came from the console, snapping her Doctor into action. He darted around to the other side and fiddled with a few things. “TARDISes are separating. Sorry, Doctor, times up. Back to long ago…” He looked up. “Where are you now? Nyssa and Teagan? Cybermen and Mara and Time Lords in funny hats and the Master? Oh, he just showed up again, same as ever,” he added as he ran around behind the console to flip a few more levers. As he progressed, the pressure began to lessen around Rose and she was able to breathe properly again.  
  
“Oh no. Really?” The younger Doctor turned, following him with his eyes.  
  
“Really,” Rose growled.  
  
“Does he still have that rubbish beard?”  
  
Her Doctor finally stopped next to Rose again. “No–no beard this time. Well, a wife.”  
  
“Yet it would seem he is not alone in that regard.” The younger Doctor chucked and then his eyes flicked upward. Then he began to fade away and his voice took on an echoing quality. “Oh. I seem to be off. What can I say? It was nice to meet you, Rose Tyler.”  
  
“Likewise.”  
  
“I look forward to meeting you…and being you,” he added to his older elf.  
  
“Thank you,” her Doctor said.  
  
He grinned. “I’m very welcome.” And then he faded away, taking the pressing feeling along with him.  
  
But her Doctor immediately flipped a switch on the console where the other Doctor had left his hat, and the man himself popped right back in as if he’d never left. Rose grunted at the return in pressure. Her Doctor picked up the hat and walked towards him.  
  
“Hang on, you really don’t want to forget this.”  
  
“Oh, yes.” The younger Doctor accepted his hat and placed it on his head. “Got a hat yourself these days?”  
  
“Oh, no. Not since…three bodies ago. Really don’t need one, though, do I? I mean look at this hair.” He gave his head a quick shake, like a dog proud of his ears or something.  
  
“It is some really great hair,” Rose agreed.  
  
“There, see?” He grinned. “Why would I want to mess that up? But!” He lifted his foot and placed it on the console and pointed at his shoe. “Trainers! And!” He pulled his glasses from his pocket and put them on. “Snap.”  
  
The younger Doctor laughed. “Not bad. Though, the whole look is a bit chic if you ask me.”  
  
“You’re wearing a stick of celery on your coat,” Rose pointed out and Her Doctor grinned, sliding his hand around hers.  
  
“Touché!” The Fifth Doctor smiled at them. Something in his eyes softened. “Look at the pair of you. We’re going to drive everyone absolutely batty, aren’t we?”  
  
They nodded simultaneously.  
  
“Just, remember, when you meet me–and I know you’re gonna have to forget this until you get here yourself–but try to remember, that I’m supposed to be with you. Don’t take no for an answer,” Rose told him seriously.  
  
The Fifth Doctor nodded and tipped his hat. “To days to come.”  
  
“All my love to long ago,” the Tenth Doctor replied.  
  
The younger Doctor disappeared properly this time but his voice still echoed back a few seconds later, _“Oh, Doctor, remember to put your shields up!”_ Only after his words faded away did the pressure end.  
  
Rose took a deep breath and the Doctor laughed quietly. He did as instructed and pressed a combination of buttons on the console that Rose didn’t recognize.  
  
“Well, that was interesting!” he chirped.  
  
She nodded. “Does that happen often?”  
  
“No. I can only remember it happening a couple times before. Although, there’s probably some I can’t remember because one of my future incarnations was there as well and I had to forget again until I get there.”  
  
Rose grinned. “Something to look forward to.”  
  
“Definitely.” The Doctor agreed and sauntered towards her. “Y’know, what you did there with him–not the kiss, I mean telling him to not take no for an answer. …I think you might have done that more than once. Because something told me even after I’d left that I needed to back for you. I knew on some level, even before I’d spent more than two hours with you, that you were supposed to be with me–and not just because all but a few of your timelines pointed in that direction,” he added quickly. “And something like that…it wouldn’t just come from one meeting. No, I think you’ll do it again at some point. Or, maybe you already have done but neither of us can remember.”  
  
Rose licked her lips and ducked her head, wringing her hands together nervously. “An’ you’re okay with that? I mean…I’m gonna live for a very long time, Doctor. Are you sure you’ll even still want me in a hundred years time? Two hundred?”  
  
“Rose Tyler…” He cupped her head in his hands. “I once told you that you could spend the rest of your life with me–ooh, such a long time ago, remember that?”  
  
She nodded, glancing up.  
  
“That hasn’t changed. What has changed is the second part. You can spend the rest of your life with me and now I have the chance to spend the rest of my life with you.”  
  
“And you really want that? You really want to deal with all my inferior humanness and…me falling over every time the TARDIS hiccups for the next thousand years?”  
  
He sighed. “Where’s this coming from?”  
  
“I just…” She looked down again. “You never answered me last night when I asked if it was alright that I’d be with you for a long time.”  
  
The Doctor was quiet for a few seconds. “That younger me? He’s got years and years before he gets to you. Centuries. And that time will be filled with many, many companions and friends. Time Lords, too. But then he’ll lose so much in a war unlike any other. He’ll do horrible things and come out feeling so tainted that he can’t bear to look at any of his former friends because he fears they’ll be able to see what he’s done. He’ll be alone and desperate and unable to find a real reason to live. …And then he’ll meet a beautiful girl from the early 21st century, of all places, and she will give him a reason to live again. She might not realize it at the time but she becomes the very air he needs to breathe, the light he sees by. She saves him. In every way.”  
  
He put his hand beneath her chin and lifted it up. “And eventually she becomes the very hearts that beat in his chest. Without her, he’ll be lost. For so long he’ll fear what will happen when he finally loses her. He won’t let himself love her as she deserves because he fears the pain of losing her will kill him if he does. He’ll hurt her and nearly push her away. But she won’t let him. She’ll choose him over everything and everyone else. When he finally gives in, he’ll realize the pain will be worth it. And, then, he’ll lose her, and it will break him. He’ll want to die.”  
  
She opens her mouth to interrupt but a quick look from him has her closing it.  
  
“What keeps him going are the memories of her–good and bad. Then she’ll come back again with the power of life flowing through her…and she’ll give him the best gift he’s ever been given. And hope for a future full of love and happiness. And for the first time in a very, very long time…he’ll be happy that his life still stretches out before him.”  
  
Rose shook her head slowly. A single tear slipped down her cheek. “So that’s a yes, then?” she whispered.  
  
The Doctor smiled and kissed her sweetly. Her lips parted beneath his and he deepened the kiss, stroking his tongue along hers slowly. She sighed through her nose, sliding an arm around his waist and running her fingers through his hair. A delighted noise rumbled in his chest. He loved kissing her. She always made him feel safe and loved. Moments like this were when he felt that he was worthy of her. Her continuing doubts over him were heartbreaking but one day, eventually, she would know she deserved him and everything he gave her. He had centuries to prove it.  
  
He pulled back from the kiss and nuzzled her cheek with his nose and Rose smiled. He always knew how to make her feel special with just a few words and touches. As far as companions went, she was one in a long line that stretched out behind and in front of her, and she accepted that. But she had her own place by his side and in his hearts that no one else would ever share.  
  
“You know what? I don’t feel like going back to Torchwood just yet.” She grinned at him, poking her tongue out. “Come on, Time Lord. Take me somewhere fun.”  
  
The Doctor beamed, letting go of her hands, and raced back to the console. “As my lady wishes! Fun it is! I think I know an excellent place, too, you’re gonna love it. It’s on the planet Eehkor.” Rose smiled at his rambling and the familiar, hyper way he worked the controls. “I’d say it’s been a while since you’ve had ice cream, right? They make some of the best you’ll find this side of the Milky Way Galaxy. Ice cream, crystal clear channel system throughout the city, wonderful markets, and some am _az_ ing street performers!”  
  
Rose smiled, running her hand along the smooth edge of the console. “Eehkor it is.”  
  
The TARDIS flew with its usual manner of bumps and jostles that had Rose clinging to the console for dear life. She grinned giddily though it all, smiling at the Doctor across the console. They landed with a jolt that sent them both sprawling and their laughter echoed through the room. He bounced to his feet and she rolled to hers and they bounded out the doors of the TARDIS hand-in-hand, ready for a day of fun and peaceful adventure.  
  
So, naturally, they were running for their lives within the hour.  
  


**FIN**

**....for now.**

 


End file.
